Cheating?

You haven't really attempted to deceive the viewer by adding a 'realistic' background. As such it's a piece of 'fantasy' and therefore not cheating. I agree with Aliengrove, why not make the background even more fantastical, rainbows and unicorns, the whole ten yards?

However if you wanted a realistic record of the sandcastle without a distracting bacground, making use of shallow DOF would have been more appropriate.

I think the impact of the edit is enormously greater having seen the original.

The former gives the context, the latter gives the ability to really focus on the intricacy of the creation without distraction.

Both are important IMO.

Photographers have been changing skies on images for countless years, why is it cheating because you've done it digitally?

Everyone has their own preferances to how much manipulation they will do, personally I like to try and get it right in camera and do as little as possible in photoshop but I am not going to call anyone who manipulates an image a cheat, unless of course they try and pass it off as one stright from the camera.

Not much you could have done here with the subjects location, although a very fast lens would have allowed you to throw that background well out of focus, which is what you should hve tried to do at the time

As an alternative to a sky, which creates the fantasy effect because ... you would never see a sandcastle with sky behind it! ... you could try patching in to a shot taken at a similar angle and focal length down on the beach.

I hate the word 'cheating' when it is used against someone who is being creative. Many years ago in my colour slide days a work colleague accused me of cheating when I told him I used a polarizing filter to improve the sky.
Nowadays I get quite annoyed with dyehard amateur photographers who say they don't believe in any PS manipulation because its 'cheating.'
Since when was being creative cheating?
From the earliest days of photography there has been photo manipulation. It used to be done in the darkroom with dodging, burning and cropping. Its now done on a computer.
Centuries before before photography was invented the great masters of art manipulated their images to create landscapes with more romantic appeal and to flatter rich patrons with attractive portaits.
Getting back to Steve's sandcastle, is it cheating? Of course its not, especially when he's made clear the alterations. Its a better picture of the sandscastle because of the treatment but you could argue the original is better because it showed the context of the image by placing the castle in its environment.
But like Dodge says, its his picture, he can do what the hell he likes with it.
David

To be fair, the OP opened with the word "Cheating" so it's no wonder others have answered directly.

I, personally don't mind what others do with their pictures, but I can still have an opinion.

"Cheating" as a word is a bit strong. I manipulate every single image I take, so do I think manipulation is wrong? Of course not. As long as it's done in a thought out and successful manner and it's not too outrageous (unless it's meant to be).

So, if there was a different sky, perhaps as others have suggested, a fantasy style of sky, this might work well. As it stands, it's obviously very manipulated and, for me, doesn't work.

Not cheating at all.
Just suppose an artist had made a drawing or painting of the main subject, would that artist have included that cluttered background, I don’t think so.

Take care.

Not cheating, although the drastic saturation difference of the background and foreground removes this from the photography category for me. It's now a graphic work of art. I'll take the edited version over the original any day.

Rather than the inconsistent lighting, it's the apparent angle of view that makes the false sky obvious as a replacement. The view of the castle is clearly looking down, so I'd expect to see distant landscape at the base of the sky area.

As far as Cheating goes, it can only be cheating if you try and pass it off as something it's not.

I generally find it more fun to do my 'cheating' in camera, but see no reason to refrain from post processing to remove distractions (reflections, sensor muck, even background objects) where this couldn't be done in camera.

I wouldn't call it cheating. The 2nd pic is so obvious a fake it'll never cheat anyone

I much prefer the original with all it's clutter and holiday snap' ness

The cluttered background does detract so to me the edited version does look better (unless the photograph is intended to show where it was.) Obviously too late now, but perhaps by taking the shot from a low view point it may have been possible to hide the clutter?

Whoever made the sandcastle did a great job.

John

I agree, try making it B&W and burn the sky in.

I don't think it's cheating. I would only think it was cheating if you actually did something to the sandcastle image itself. Remove or add something that was original. Removing an image background enhances the image itself. I saw someone wrote that and agree with it. I remove the background a lot...people and objects that I find interrupting the image.

Great picture. Thanks for sharing.

It has taken a little while to get the correct (ish) sky so I have had another go. This time with a moody sunset.
What do you think?

It's not quite right, since the sunset is behind, and the foreground isn't showing any signs of backlighting.

But hey... so what. I can imagine some fill-in front light source.

I love it. All the more since usually I don't like this sort of thing.