I was sorting through Picassa when I came upon a couple of older photographs. I actually did this a long time ago, but since it’s fresh on my mind, I’ll bring it up here.
Back in 1996 (or was it 1995?) we went to Maine for a week. Laura had a conference at Bates College in Lewiston and I tagged along for the ride. While she attended sessions, I road out into the wilds of Maine. One of the places we both visited was the famous Portland Head Lighthouse, near Portland. This is probably one of the most photographed scenes in the US, and we were not immune to the photographic urge. Here’s the photo that I took…
…except that it’s not the real photo. When we there it was very overcast, and was even drizzling rain on occasion. Here’s what it REALLY liked like when we were there…
Using Photoshop version 5, I think, I was able to doctor up the image. I took the blue sky with clouds from another photo I found somewhere on the Internet and pasted it into the picture. Laura pointed out that the gray water just didn’t match, so I also went in and changed the color balance of the water to more closely reflect the sky, and Voila! It looks like we were there under perfect conditions.
If you look closely at the fake, you will see some harsh white borders around the lighthouse tower where I couldn’t clean things up as nicely as I might have liked, but it’s still a good rendition.
For awhile all I had was the fake digital image, but then I stumbled upon the original in a photo album tucked away in our house somewhere. I’m glad I’ve got both – what really was and what might have been.
[tags]Photoshop, Portland Head Lighthouse, photography[/tags]
IMO, in doing these modifications, proably the toughest thing, aside from selection edges, is the lighting. This image’s lighting is quite subdued. One can theorize that the sun is blocked by a cloud, leading to the lack of shadows. It is a good “fake” for sure.