National Museum of the Marine Corps - 2 HDR attempts

Stopped by the Museum of the Marine Corps while coming back home from school and managed to get a few shots off while the sun was setting. I didn't use a tripod, but was able to get away with a few exposures that were close enough in alignment that I could get a good HDR merge.

The museum from far away

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I like your second image best. It seems like a more natural-looking HDR.

Great sky in the first and lovely composition in both.

Oooorrrahhh ! I agree. The 2nd image is very well done. 1st image just looks too weird for my taste.

Thanks for the comments. Anyone else wanna chime in?

I want to go back with an ultra wide angle (hopefully I get a Canon EF-S 10-22mm for Christmas) and a tripod. I think it will make the building even better looking.

Number two is very good.

I think the issue with the first is that the bright sky segment at the right fifth or so comes out unnaturally dark. If you still have the source images, you could possibly try to adjust the white point a bit differently. On the other hand, the colours on the lower third of the image (which, I presume, is mostly from sun and sky reflections on the asphalt) is very nice. All things failing, there's still manual HDR Tedious but sometimes the only way.

Update: I apparently didn't read your post properly and thought you used Photoshop CS2 for the HDR. In that case, potentially scrap what I wrote on white point adjustment, as it may be called something different. Sorry for that.

That being said, the second picture is absolutely badass!!! A really good use of HDR... very nice colours and very good contrast!

Very nice shots, the first one is just amazing!

I like the 1st one... the clouds look awesome!

Thanks. Seems like the majority likes number 2 over 1.