Down By the Old Mill Stream

“Down by the old mill stream where I first met you, with your eyes of blue, dressed in gingham too; it was there I knew that you loved me true, you were sixteen, my village queen, by the old mill stream.”

This old song, written in 1908 and made famous in 1910 by Tell Taylor is the perfect accompaniment for this photograph. The Old Mill on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is reportedly one of the most photographed mills in the United States. I took this photograph most likely in the late 1970s judged by the short gym style shorts the young boy in the lower left hand corner is wearing. Its funny I don’t remember actually going to this mill and I’m guessing when we were there, it was not nearly as commercialized as it is now. Pigeon Forge is located on the northwest side of Route 321 which traverses the Great Smokey Mountains and links Pigeon Forge with Gatlinburg, Tennessee, the southeast entry into the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. I like this photograph very much, but like many landscape photos, the sky in the original photograph lacked any color. I found a tutorial online which taught me how to replace the boring white sky with a more vivid blue sky I had photographed last year. What a difference the change in sky made!
Here is the original photograph:

Here is a link to the tutorial. It worked like a charm! I’ve tried many times to replace a sky and this method is by far the best result I have ever gotten.