Sing Sing in Papua New Guinea

This picture is an interesting experiment. I took it in 1996 with my medium format film camera, the Mamiya RZ 67, at the huge gathering of tribes in the mountains of Papua New Guinea called the Sing Sing. Each tribes' identity is on full display, and it's a remarkable photographic and cultural experience. The original sky was white, so I scanned the transparency with a high-end Imacon scanner and then, in Photoshop, used the sky replacement command. I was very surprised that the software handled all of those feathers perfectly. Also, notice I used an out of focus image of clouds. For photographic realism, the sky had to be out of focus to make sense. That's not what I saw, but that's what a telephoto would do. Also notice I used flash. In the 90's, high ISO settings were not ideal due to increased grain, so flash was the answer at that time.