I did a wreck this dress shoot with my best friend Megan this past fall after she separated from her husband of 5 years. I love the expression on Megan's face when I took this photo. This is not the original photo, I edited it in the newest version of Adobe Photoshop and did some AI edits to the photo including adding the mountains and a sky replacement as this was shot at Woolfrey's Pond in Lewisporte, Newfoundland, Canada. The original photo was shot on my Nikon Z7 with the Tamron 24-70 mm F/2.8 lens
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With Peter Hurley
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Forgetting, for a moment, the ethical argument of AI and sky replacement as it pertains to photography, I feel like the image is way over-processed. The sky is incongruent with the foreground. After all, the photograph is shot with mid-day harsh light bearing down on the subject from directly above.... composited with an early evening sunset.
Of course, the debate about what constitutes a photograph will never be solved. Some people will say that it simply does not matter if it's real or not... it's all art. And there is some validity to that point of view. But back to your photo, if I were intent from the beginning on fixing a boring sky or background, I'd want to shoot the base picture in a way that would work with the composite I had in mind. In other words, if I expect to add more drama and color to the sky in post-processing, I'd underexpose the photograph for ambient light and fill-flash the face, warm the color temperature, or shoot later in the afternoon if you can.
I agree with your points. More specifically, though, I think that things like sky replacements can be dangerous when using stock images. I don't even use photoshop, and I instantly recognized this sky as an option. People are good at recognizing patterns, and reuse of things like this, ethical or not, art or not, can cause problems.