isloating a background in photoshop (need ideas)

[wmmk]

Hey everyone!
Today was a beautiful day in Chicago, and with me being Jewish, I was one of the only people at a local forest preserve (everyone else must have been at Church for Easter).
Anyways, here's one of my shots:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/199/451837897_0e81c292b4.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wmmk/451837897/)
I like it, but the clouds and trees obscure some of the detail in the wildgrasses in the foreground. I was hoping to unclutter the composition a bit in photoshop, but didn't want to change the image terribly drastically or make it look unnatural. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for me. I would post a full size original, but that'd be past the site's 244KB attachment limit.

Thanks,
wmmk

[nickster9224]

what forest preserve is that, it look familiar to me

[CanadaRAM]

This is a challenge. There are two separate problems, one may be fixable, one probably isn't

The deep colour and contrast in the sky is domainating the more monochrome foreground. It would be a painstaking job but you could create a mask around the trees and grasses, and move the sky to a different layer which you could play with desaturating or lightening it.

The other bigger problem is that you have brown grasses against a busy background of brown trees. This is a PS job that I would throw my hands in the air and give up on. There is not sufficient contrast between FG and BG in brightness or in colour, and the background is insanely busy.

IMO, this would have had to be addressed in the camera -- composition and depth of field. I really don't see how the FG BG problem with the trees can be solved in PS. Maybe someone with a lot more experience than me can correct me.

[Father Jack]

Corel Knockout 2 is a great tool for making complicated masks and selections. :)

FJ

[Lovesong]

Try extracting the foreground (not that hard) and upping the saturation and contrast.
If you want just the grass in focus, try extracting it (you're using a fairly high MP camera) and pasting it on a blurred background (creating a larger aperture effect).

[bartelby]

You could remove the large grass with the cloning tool.