Adventure into HDR

I have avoided HDR for a while now - partially because I found the psychedelic look a bit unappealing and partially, I'm ashamed to say, I didn't understand the technique - it requires sitting down and learning how to balance the multiple exposures into one cohesive picture and although I had dabbled I hadn't really committed to learning until today.



I processed the image above from a single RAW file shot in Thailand this February - I produced 4 additional versions of the image ranging from -2 to +2 exposure and then popped them into Photomatrix Pro - the initial tone-mapping was completed here but the overall image was riddled with halo's around the mountains and inconsistent, dark areas of sand on the beach, in order to achieve amore natural look I dropped it into Photoshop and put the original and +2 images onto layers above my HDR from Photomatrix and used layer masks to brush through some of the light sand in the mid ground. The original image as captured in camera (slightly over-exposed) is below: