Using the tools of your software you can transform your basic images simply and quickly. We shot the old bombed out ruins of Coventry Cathedral shown below with a Nikon Coolpix 950 camera. We chose a low angle to give a dynamic appearance, but the original sky didn't add much to the image.

Call up your layers palette F7 and rename the thumbnail from the default background to a name of your choice. Using the magic wand select and area of sky and then choose similar from the select menu. Photoshop will then select all the similar tones to what you originally selected. If all the sky is not picked up hold down the shift key and you can add to the selection with the magic wand.

Before cutting out all the sky from the ruin first feather the edge of your selection by 1-2 pixels. The feather command is also found in the select menu. After removing the sky you will be left with your ruin floating on a transparent background as shown below. If some areas of your ruin still show detail you can deal with them by choosing the burn tool from the tool bar. Use a pressure setting of 50 upwards and darken all the light areas to make a solid black.

Choose another sky to compliment your ruined cathedral, it can be one you have photographed or a computer generated one like the one below..

Drag the thumbnail of your sky from your layers palette and drop it into main image of the ruined cathedral.

If you have chosen the right sky your silhouette of the ruin combined with it should transform the image.

Coventry Cathedral was destroyed during a second world war bombing raid, but remains in its present form as a memorial. Why not add some aircraft to the sky to finish off the effect.

Use your copy and paste commands to duplicate many aircraft to a separate layer. Size them using your transform tools and reduce the layer opacity to create the right feel.