Almost Heaven

The original photograph without any adjustments.

     My favorite picture is titled, Almost Heaven.  I know the name is not very original on my part, but the opportunity presented itself as I drove along the highway near Greenville, Texas one afternoon.  At the time, I was there for a month-long work detail and as I drove up and down this highway each day for my job I got to know the area very well.  I had taken my Pentax K100 (digital SLR)  with me for my trip and kept it in the car each day just in case I saw something photo-worthy.

     I am naturally drawn to old dilapidated buildings, anything rusty, old cars, and things most people would not waste their time trying to take a picture of.  Luckily, the Greenville, Texas area - about an hour east of Dallas - is full of old decaying barns, farmland, rusty tractors, old cars still being used, and lots of things only I would find photo-worthy.  

     That is the fun thing about combining photography with Photoshop - the picture itself does not have to be pretty to begin with, it just needs to be somewhat interesting.  I am a big believer in that just about any picture is somewhat salvageable.  The picture does not even have to be good - it can be shot at a poor angle, poorly lit, crooked, in motion, full of noise and even out of focus, but if there is something interesting about it, something good can come out of that picture.  I take pictures like that constantly - I even go out of my way trying to take a bad picture, just to see what I can do with it.  Sometimes that is the fun and the challenge - trying to make something of nothing... trying to make something out a picture others might delete from their computer.

     Which brings me to the picture, Almost Heaven.  As I drove along the highway that day I saw ranch after ranch after ranch, all with a unique name.  I was not necessarily looking to take a picture of a ranch, but I was hoping to see an old car, an old rundown building, or something ironic - for that I would have stopped the car to take a picture.  And then it clicked - a ranch titled, Almost Heaven.  I just happened to be in the right place at the right time - the perfect name for a ranch, a pretty spring day, and thick green grass billowing in the breeze.  By the time I saw it, I had to turn around and drive a couple of  miles out of my way just to take a picture.  But once I was in front of the sign I saw how perfect it all was.  I was happy to be in the right place at right time to catch the image and I was anxious to get back home from my trip to check it out in Photoshop.  

     When I finally did open it up in Photoshop, I was very disappointed to see that my perfect shot was not so perfect, and was actually drab and washed out.  In its original state, it was nothing worth looking at twice, other than it had a nice ironic title.  It had been an overcast day that day, but at the time, it all seemed much prettier.  Convinced that I had a great picture that was worthy of my time, I spent several days working with the picture to see what I could do with it.  I knew Photoshop, but I was not anything that resembled an expert.  I knew how to give the picture some pizazz, but the picture needed more than that - it needed an extreme makeover.

     That is when I came up with the idea of removing the sky and putting in a sky that was worthy of the title.  I did not have any “sky” pictures in my small portfolio, so rather than just stick a “sky” in there from a picture I already had, I decided to put the picture on hold.  What I decided to do was to focus on taking pictures of the sky and clouds as the weather warranted.  Luckily living in Texas presents that opportunity on a daily basis, so it did not take long for me to have the perfect shot of a cloud in a pretty blue sky.  But it is hard to take the right shot of a sky, as we only see clouds from down below, or off in the distance.  Once again, I was lucky enough to live in a very hilly area of Texas so that I could take pictures of clouds at the right angle, rather than trying to shoot upwards to catch primarily the bottom of a could.

     It did not take long for me to come up with the perfect picture of a cloud in a blue sky to go along with my picture of the Almost Heaven ranch.  Combining the two was not as difficult as I thought, though it did take some effort to get rid of the sky along the tree tops and leaves.

     What I did was focus on each picture separately.  

     First, I focused on the Almost Heaven ranch picture by bringing out the perfect amount of green, and brightening up the white in the sign and fence.  In certain parts of the sign and fence I had to use the Clone tool in Photoshop to get rid of the rust, and in other parts of the picture I had to use the Clone tool to remove a building in the far background.  Bringing out the green in the grass was not difficult using Curves and Levels, but figuring out what would balance out the blue sky I intended to put in the background was, as the colors needed to work together.  Deleting the washed out white sky was a challenge where the sky met the trees.  I used the Lasso tool to remove the majority of the sky quickly, then came back in with the Eraser tool.  I adjusted the Opacity and Flow for the Airbrush Eraser to give the area a blended opacity where the sky met the trees.  At a certain point I was unable to delete the sky without removing individual leaves at the tree tops, so what I decided to do was to use the Clone too to add individual leaves back in to the tree tops.  This worked out well and helped balance out the abruptness and the hard edge that the Eraser tool gave.  At this point I was finished with the Almost Heaven part of the picture.

     Second, I focused on coming up with the best cloud picture.  The area the cloud would fit in to was such that not every cloud picture would work, so I soon found myself going back out to take pictures of more clouds.  Thanks to this project, I now have hundreds of pictures of clouds and blue skies to use in other pictures.  But I digress.  I found the perfect cloud picture, then worked to make the prettiest blue sky and the whitest clouds.  I then inserted the sky in to the background, moved the clouds around til I had just the perfect amount of blue sky and white clouds, and decided I had completed the picture.

     The result is my perfect picture that hangs on my office wall.  Every time I look at it I am reminded of a beautiful summer day, lost loved ones, and how we all need to create our own, Almost Heaven.  I do not currently offer this picture for sale at my website, http://industrialstrengthphotography.zenfolio.com/   but expect to add it in the near future.

The completed photograph after being introduced to Photoshop.