thanks for the comment on the picture.
Re. his technique, or at least what I tried to emulate:
* Desat. In particular of the blue. need further analysis here, as his photos seem to have a sepia tone. Anyway, it is not always applied uniformly, you find here and there spots of colors that do not look desaturated at all.
* Very high contrast. I had among others to add a contrast layer at its maximum
* Selective dodge and burn. I tried a number of methods, including:
- applying selectively a curve filter where the curve was strongly bent up or down
- using a soft light layer with black/white touches
- applying the dodge (on the higlights) / burn (on the shadows) editing tools
Look at those skies. The photographer was careful to get the pictures when the sky would add significant drama to the secene.
Other than that your list of processing steps seems close enough to me. Try and analyse exactly which areas the photographer chooses to dodge and burn.
HDR and LOTS of dodge&burn, a little TOO much for my taste though...
but the perspectives and views he chooses for his compositions are really awesome and a good inspiration!
I don't think they are fake, but they might indeed be taken from other photographs. Nothing stops you from doing the same though. I know that some photogs have a library with lots of skies just for cases like that.
