“When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don’t give a hoot in hell about it. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself. And that is no mean function.” – Edward Steichen
Yes, this is a manipulated image. It is composed of three images and run through HDR Efex Pro and then processed with Silver Efex Pro. No plants, clouds or sky were touched. I did remove about a half dozen dust spots. 🙂