Peggys Cove HDR

I would like constructive criticism on this please. I am concerned with the "haloing" around the top of the light. This was created with a 3 stop sequence from HDR EFX 2 and lightroom 3, 6D and the 24-105mm. Any and all comments welcomed.

Very nice image. Really like it. Are you using the clarity setting. ? If so you turn it down the halo might go. Also maybe brighten up lighthouse and rocks a tad . Using dodge and burn brush .

You should reprocess the RAW images...maybe several times before you get what you like...don't settle for first result.

The first thing I would ask you is what is your subject?

My brain says you want the lighthouse to be the subject of the picture, but my eyes are screaming at me telling me the sky is the subject and the big dumb lighthouse is in the way.
A simple fact that I've struggled with in the past and am slowly learning to fix in my photography, is that your eye will always get drawn to the brightest part of the picture. In this case you've got this awesome, bright, colourful sky which continually drags my eye away from the lighthouse.

The actual HDR isn't bad, although the rocks do look rather flat to me as if the exposure for those wasn't long enough and you had to try and brighten it to bring out detail after. (although that could just be my cheap and nasty work monitor)

Personally I'd like to see the "sky" exposure on it's own, as I bet that's making quite a nice silhouette picture.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a terrible picture by any means, I just think you need to get a better balance between the super bright colourful sky, and your subject.

Thanks people. I have not tried using the brush with lightroom too much, I really don't understand what it is doing. I need to read up on that more.

It's not a problem to go back and re-do the images, the originals are alway there. I think that I will let it sit for a day or so then go back.

Now that you have pointed it out, I have to agree with you that the lighthouse (which is supposed to be the object of interest) just doesn't stand out against the sky. Actually what I was trying for was the setting sun streaming thru the light. I did get that and it looks OK, but not as I had imagined. I was hoping for perhaps some light streams from that.

That put the sun still up pretty high in the sky so I decided to stay and take more shots as the sunset developed, this was one of a series as the sun was going down.

Thanks for the input and comments.

I moved to California from Nova Scotia, so Peggy's Cove is one of my favorite places! The clouds are amazing in this shot, but I agree with the others that the rocks/lighthouse itself needs to be brought up lighter. Would love to see this shot tweaked so there is more balance in that regard.