Composites

Now it might seem silly but I got bored writing about Egypt and I’m sure you were also finding it starting to get boring. Temple after temple, there’s only so much hieroglyphics you can look at. Anyway I decided to use some time during the lock-down to just watch some great photography videos and maybe have a play with Luminar 4.

Playing around with AI Sky Replacement using Luminar 4

Luminar 4 is sort of touted as a Lightroom/Photoshop replacement, but I still don’t think it’s there, yet. However the AI Sky Replacement module works extremely well and I’m all for anything that saves me time and makes processing easy.

I like to create images. An unusual word to use with photography, create. But it’s true. It’s very rare that I post an image S.O.O.C. (straight out of camera).

Composite photograph with the addition of the galaxy

I shoot in RAW. If you use JPEG you let the software geeks and ultimately the processor inside your camera dictate what the final photograph will look like? Why let a machine make the decisions, that’s how SKYNET started and we all know how that ended.

Generally all of my RAW photographs are post processed in Lightroom, but for these composites I’m experimenting with Luminar 4.

We had this belief about photography, but that’s about to disappear because of the computer. I actually welcome this development; I’d like to think that more overt recognition and discussion of the manipulation which has always been inherent in photographic representation is healthy. 

 – Esther Parada – Writing in 1993 about her work with digital photographs

With this group of photographs I have done some conversions from day to night, changed skies or in one case added some atmospherics. Generally I found Luminar 4 does a good job of the sky replacement, far better than I could ever do in Photoshop.

Composite photograph with the addition of the galaxy

Originally this was a day-time photograph and I changed it to night, then added the night sky. Is it perfect, no. But it’s one of those ones I could stick on Instagram and maybe get a few likes, However I really don’t use IG that much and I’m not chasing likes anyway.

Playing around with AI Sky Replacement using Luminar 4

A lovely summers evening becomes a dark brooding scene with lightning in the background. The sky was blue so I had to match the colour of the field and trees using a blue filter.

Composite photograph with the addition of the sky and lightning

Last one, a sort of black and white with a platinum tint. You may be of the opinion, these are not for you. Fair enough, I’m a big boy. You either like them or you hate them, but I will leave you with this.

My photograph, my vision.

Mike Hardisty