Back when I lived in Missoula, Montana I took some classes at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography. They had a sort of mantra “No, white skies!” In Ireland with it’s almost always cloudy skies this proved to be a challenge. In this image I had almost the holy grail of ancient site photography: A round tower, a celtic cross and the ruins of an old church all in one photo and the tower was framed in a window. Doesn’t get much better than that compositionally. But the sky in the upper corner was a very flat white. So, I turned to Topaz Texture Effects to help me out. I actually found several looks I liked but most were more monotone and I was grooving on the orange color of the lichens so I chose this one which gave me some color in the sky and a kind of crusty look which suited the old ruins well. And, of course, a nice purplely blue sky with texture