HDR - did i do good?

[GeX]

C&C (but don't be too harsh, i love this shot)

my first attempt at using HDR.. did i get it right?

 

[GeX]

yeah, i know its as well composed as it could be - i was just playing with HDR to try and put a bit of life into the image.

i played around with different crops.. but that ledge is really annoying!

 

[GeX]

indeed, if it "doesn't really look like an HDR image" then i think it's right or nearly right, you shouldn't be able to look at a photo and spot all the PP that's been done to it. If it stands out, its overdone.

 

[GeX]

end of the day i'm not too fussed about things being 'correct' to other people. as fstop said, the image is wonky and has an out of focus bit to it. that doesnt bother me, and i've cropped it to see what it'd look like and i don't think it looks any good.

something i don't understand though, with an image like that - the sky needs less exposure than the other parts, so without using bracketing, or an ND grad filter there isn't really any other way to do it, is there? I dont have any ND grad filters, so chose to use shoot it in RAW then under/over expose in PP and then combine. I don't think that makes me lazy.

which sounds odd, cos i posted this thread with the title "HDR - did i do good?".. so thats kinda contradticing myself..meh.

 

[GeX]

i didnt like the sky. origonal

 

[GeX]

Now looking at the original I would have just taken two shots one for the sky and the one you had and layed the sky from the 2nd image over that one and feather blended them manually. The buildings look far better in the original.

not an option unfortunealty, not really time to do that. though normally when i take offence to the sky, i under expose the image till it looks right and then blend it onto one exposed better for the rest of the image. just thought i'd play with photomatrix this time.

something i just noticed though, firefox renders differently to windows image viewer thingy.