i suck horribly at PS. in need of some help :(

[thereforeiamx]

i took a series of photos at this location some time ago and isolated the best one:

the problems are that:
1 - i'm not sure if the ladder acts as a distraction. I would rather there be symmetry in the picture then anything else. the ladder just annoys the hell out of me!
2 - the chandelier is very overexposed and i didn't think there was anything i could've done in-camera to fix this. i took another one of the chandelier [zoomed in at 70mm] and came up with this.

.....and i have no idea how to somehow get this version of the chandelier into the first photograph

 

[Big Mike]

Use the lasso or even just the shape marquee tool to loosely select the object. Copy it to the clipboard. Then past it into the first version, it should come in as a new layer. Lower the oppacity of the new layer, just enough so that you can see where it is on the lower level. Move, scale & transform the new one until it covers the old one, or at least is really close. Then put the opacity back up to 100%. Next, add a layer mask to the new layer. You can then 'paint' on the layer mask to add to or remove from it. Get in close and mask the extra parts of the new layer, so that only the object is showing through. If you weren't able to cover the old one, you might need to do some cloning work on that layer.

I'm sure there are plenty of ther ways but that's probably what I would do.

 

[thereforeiamx]

i got lost right after you mentioned layer mask, since i'm totally unfamiliar with what that does. do i use that to remove the dark borders/areas surrounding the chandelier in the 2nd photo?

 

[tkaat]

I didn't know how to work a layer mask, myself, till last night
here is the tutorial I used
http://www.t-tutorials.com/read-tutorials/31/tolkiens-master-ring
I didn't follow him while he was teaching but tried it on 2 of my own photos afterward