(SOMEWHERE) Amy manipulation research

John Amy uses image manipulation to add images in to photographs that are not originally there, for example in the first photograph he has edited in shadows of scuba divers and a coral reef. By doing this he creates more interesting and active pictures.
I found these pictures on John Amy's website: http://www.johnamy.co.uk/manipulation.html
Out of 10 i rate his work 4-5 because to me he has edited the photos too much and they don't appear as photographs anymore to me, they are too edited and i feel they also look a bit tacky/cheap.
What i think John Amy has done to create these pictures is used a software/tool such as photoshop and cropped/cut out the image he wants then placed it on top of another picture and then used the softwares tools to fit it in and blend it nicely into the picture so that it does not look misplaced and just dumped onto the picture. For example in the second image he will have cropped the image of the world then pasted it onto the picture of the petrie dish and edited it to fit the petrie dish and then erase the section of the world where the stick is covering.