This is probably way off-topic, but I have been working on a group of photographs from the 1970s taken in Reading and the surrounding Berks County in Pennsylvania. A few years ago I had an exhibition at Goggleworks in Reading called "RDG 76" (the bicentennial year) that was reasonably well received. I am expanding the original parameters considerably and reprocessing most everything with a much better understanding of Photoshop's capabilities and some new tools and plug-ins. A large part of this is using Akvid's Retoucher to remove dust spots and scratches from the scans of the 50-year-old negatives.
Occasionally I get carried away. You might not think it, but these two images are from the same scan and processed identically with six layers: the pasture, the pasture's shading, the horses, the fence, the trees, and the sky. My thought was that the original blown-out sky was a problem and I used Neo's sky replacement tool and voila! Sky. After staring at the print for a few days I questioned whether the new sky was distracting and turned off that layer resulting in what you see.
Even more off-topic, this is the upper horse pasture at Camp Conrad Weiser. In the late 1960s through at least the mid-1970s (maybe still, but I haven't been there in a long time) about half of their horses were wintered there. In 1966 I spent several weeks digging postholes for that fence. There were a lot of rocks.
Good old Camp Conrad Weiser! We had our 6th grade Cornwall Terrace Elementary (Wilson School District) retreat there ... I think you're right with the first picture. The sky does seem a little too much, but I think a little bit of texture in the sky wouldn't be such a bad idea. I like the minimalist feeling of the image. The layers of grassy hills, tree horizon, and sky broken just a bit by a group of horses has a nice feel to it.
Nice work, Andrew. I agree with you about the original sky. I hate the whole concept of sky replacement, and often the perspective doesn't match e.g. clouds become horizontally streakier closer to the horizon. I think there might even be a touch of that in the first image here. The sky doesn't look quite right to me.
I admire your craft, and respect the work you've posted, even if I don't often comment as it isn't always "my" thing. I'm always interested in your posts.