A few months ago, I was made aware of something called Skies from an outfit called Layer Cake.  The “something” is a pair of bundles of sky backdrops that can be used, from what I’m told from someone who has experience with them, to easily replace boring skies with more pleasing ones, thereby giving your images extra oomph.  If you look at the thumbnails of the various skies at this link, you can see at least some of the offerings.  Consider how dropping one of those skies into your bald, blue sky image, could change the overall effect.

I’ve been asked if I have an ethical problem with something like this.  It’s been argued, on the one hand, that there’s something fake about the entire process.  For one thing, this is the creation of something that never existed (i.e. you’re placing a sky in a scene where it never appeared), which—for some people—turns the concept of what photography is on its head.

What’s more, we’re talking about taking a sky out of some purchased archive—it’s like a stock scene—and dropping it into a photograph.  It’s not even a sky that the person who’s creating the composite photographed himself!  It’s not entirely unlike cloning a moose—from a photograph that someone else took—into your shot of a river.

I’m quite a relativist on most matters like this—because I’m advocate of photography as art (we’re obviously not talking about documentary photography here), which includes the idea that the medium has all the rights and privileges of other art forms.  In that respect, it could be argued that this sky replacement scheme is something similar to creating a collage.  But even I don’t completely buy that argument.  While a collage is a whole-from-parts medium, it uses a series of discrete elements to create a holistic final product that is entirely different than the elements that form it.  The sky replacement is, really, simply producing a more pleasing aesthetic result by replacing a “deficient” element; it’s not creating a product that is greater than the sum of its parts.

In the end, then, I’m ambivalent about the sky replacement procedure—ambivalent at best.

But here’s the greater point, I think.  Even if I make peace with the concept of sky replacement, even if I’m completely comfortable with it, I’d never use it myself.

Why is that?

My photography, in the end, is about capturing moments and triggering memories.  When I’m in the field, I’m trying to take hold of a moment in time, suffused with meaning, and express it visually.  When I view one of my images, the memory of the moment comes flooding back.  I can put myself in front of the scene, relive it, and experience the meaning all over again.  If I drop in a sky that wasn’t present at the time of capture, I’ve failed in my quest.  I may or may not create something that is “prettier,” but I’d never be able to view that image and place myself in the moment of capture…because that moment never existed.

All of the images accompanying this entry include the skies that were present at the time of capture.  I can look at all of these images and tell you what was going on—both in front of me, in the tangible world and inside myself at the time they were made.  And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thursday Tips is written by Kerry Mark Leibowitz, a guest blogger on 1001 Scribbles, and appears every other Thursday.  To read more of his thoughts on photography, please visit his blog:  Lightscapes Nature Photography.