After completing the Trucks assignment, I decided to modify some of my photos. Since I waited until the last day, I ended up shooting at a time of day that was not very optimal and ended up shooting into the sun. Since it was kind of hazy, the sky came out pure white. I wanted to see if I could fix this so the following morning I shot a couple of pictures of the sun shining from some clouds. I lined up the sun in the cloud picture with the location of the sun in the truck picture, and then used a layer mask to substitute the background. There was a building in the background that was hard to get to look good, so I masked it out as well. The edges of the building looked too hard against the clouds. The weeds in the background actually blended a little bit better, but the edge is still pretty harsh. I flattened the layers and smudged the edges hoping that it would blend a little better. This did make some improvement, but I was hoping someone could give me some advice on how to make the background blend better.
Before:
After:
Truck EXIF:
Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Exposure: 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture: f/7.1
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: On, Fired
Cloud EXIF:
Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/20.0
Focal Length: 29 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: -1 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire
I did lighten the clouds considerably to blend better.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.