Grand Canyon - Dramatic Effect

I recently purchased Photomatix Essentials and have been playing around with it. I used a default setting with very little tweaking to put, what I think, is a very dramatic effect on these two shots of the Grand Canyon from last year.

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Interesting colours, the horizons are off a tad though.

i like 2 best, i'd darken up that white area near the lower left

Photomatrix used to be pretty good, till the day i brought the nik HDR plugins, they work great in cs6, but you still got dramatic effects there though, nice one

Thanks for your comments and suggestions. I had actually meant to straighten the horizons before posting and just forgot. I hope the lightening in #2 looks OK. I am somewhat color blind and am not the best at some changes. Here are my beat attempts:

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/photofranz/8241​331641/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/photofranz/8242​400766/

My 2 cents - I think its too much, its one of these not natural looking HDR pics.

Everyone's 2 cents is valid. However, "natural" was about the last thing I was looking for. I have always been one of those people who thinks that "art" is very subjective.

I like the first one, it just needed some noise reduction.

Thanks, Dave. I actually had run it through NoiseWare (not this version of the photo) and still the version that is my wallpaper right now is the noisy version. I felt that the roughness was a part of the appeal to me.

One of my favorite painters is Ivan Albright. His paintings are like life captured in a hideous "Dave Hill" effect ( http://www.davehillpho​to.com/ ). Here is a link to his work: http://www.cegur.com/h​tml/frameAlbright.html , I guess I just appreciate a bit of a "different angle" on things once in a while.

I suppose this belonged more in "Still Life, B/W & Experimental"

The de-noised version socalrailfan shows above is definitely a better version. A bit on the "edge," but interesting none the less!

Great shots and the HDR created very dramatic effects. I will admit I like the de-noised version better, but the noisy one has nice artsy look.

LOL, OK, I will agree that de-noised is "better", but better in a subjective way. I am still keeping the noisy version on my wallpaper. Did any of you look at the Ivan Albright web site? He may not be my favorite artist, but he is up there and this probably says something about my taste.