HDR - FIRST ATTEMPT!

Trying my hand at HDR and would love to have your comments for my first attempt. How I can improve, if it looks like I am heading in the right direction etc. Still doesn't seem to have the "pop" that I was looking for.

I'm not a fan of HDR, but this looks pretty good for the first time.
The building might "pop" more if it were sharper & a little brighter than the wall.
I see pink in the sky. Was this near sunset/dawn? If it was, a darker sky would make the building more prominent, too. And I'm not caring much for the brighter water under the tree.
I see that you have CS2. You can adjust just specific areas in a frame using Adjustment Layers which have a mask built in & can be modified to only affect that part of the image that you think needs it. And they're reversible in case you need to tweak them later for a print. . See post #9 in A question about sky and also the Airport runway shoot link in my post.

Outside of the sky, i like it.

PhotosGuy wrote in post #14998328
I'm not a fan of HDR, but this looks pretty good for the first time.
The building might "pop" more if it were sharper & a little brighter than the wall.
I see pink in the sky. Was this near sunset/dawn? If it was, a darker sky would make the building more prominent, too. And I'm not caring much for the brighter water under the tree.
I see that you have CS2. You can adjust just specific areas in a frame using Adjustment Layers which have a mask built in & can be modified to only affect that part of the image that you think needs it. And they're reversible in case you need to tweak them later for a print. . See post #9 in A question about sky and also the Airport runway shoot link in my post.

Thanks

I am going to be spending a lot of time here..