Here are a couple of my HDR shots..

Check out stuck in customs, for some of the best HDR shots and several guides!



Football Field HDR by XEntity, on Flickr


Nelsons Column HDR by XEntity, on Flickr


Nelsons Column HDR 2nd edit by XEntity, on Flickr

Love these, could the first not do with some clockwise rotation to level the horizon?

Are they one short HDR's? They haven't lost their sense of reality in the process.

I know it's quite bad, but I hadn't actually noticed it was on the squiff! But I think I levelled it against the white line rather than the horizon... I'll have a play in Photoshop and see if I can get both parallel, otherwise it might look off either way.. And the other one could do with a touch the otherway, I think I might have uploaded the wrong pic for that one maybe, as I'm sure I fixed that one!

They are all 3 shot @ +/- 2 I think, HDR doesn't have to look out of this world, it's all about how much you want to push it really, the Nelsons column shot is on the verge of being a bit too much I think, but both are much better than any of the single shots.

If I have time later, I'll post up the original 3 shots for each, and maybe a slightly less HDR'd one of nelsons column..

The firsts good, could do with being straightened but the problem you'll have then is you'll have to crop part of it off and you'll loose part of the flare at the bottom of the picture and it might not look as good, worth a try though.

The 2nd isn't too bad either, it could do with the white balance being adjusted on the final image and there's a little bit oh haloing going  on but not too much but it is a little distracting once you notice it.

I'm no expert with HDR stuff either, haven't done any so can't be lol

That looks much better, never thought of using skew to get around it before, usually just rotate and crop as its fairly easy to get the correct angle to rotate it by in photoshop using the ruler, might have to try skew next time especially if it means you don't have to crop it.  In fact might have one I can try it on with me, the jobs of having my photos on a caddy along with portable photoshop, lunchtime photo editing

If these are your first then you can't really complain, you'll just have to go and do more and become an expert so when I try it you can tell me what to do lol

I found the ruler tool sort of does that, if you draw what you want to be straight, ie the horizon with the ruler tool (which is under the eyedropper on the left hand side) then go to rotate and rotate it by an arbitary amount the ruler already fills in how much to rotate everything by so you can just click ok and your done.  Not sure if that works with skew however, worth a try though as it would make life much easier.

I've just put up in the first post, the 2nd version of Nelsons column, with a lot less HDR effect, I think I've gone too far the other way, now I've posted it up side by side!

Also like I mentioned before, if you want some tips from a professional, then Trey Ratcliffe at http://www.stuckincustoms.com/ is your man! (I'd love his "job" BTW)