Not bad for a first attempt Next time though try setting your smoothing higher so you don't get the halos. Good luck and keep trying different things and you'll be cranking out great HDR's in no time.

I agree with locks.... great first try.. watch out for overdoing the halos.... sometimes it can be really cool.... but most of the time it just looks overdone.

yep, like they said. nice shot, though

One of the downsides of HDR is the images stop looking real. this a great effort, but, imo, this falls into the 'unreal' trap. good effort for a first try though.

OOO very cool

thank you for your input and your kind words! I was wondering what is the purpose of HDR? Is it just for creative purposes? I read in an interview by a pro that hdr enhances the details of images making them look more natural but as far as i can see hdr makes an image look surreal...

I would have to agree. This looks kine of like a photo negative, almost like you inverted it first. But the colors are cool so GL!

I think the general idea of HDR is to gain detail in both the shadows and highlights so the range is closer to what we see ourselves. Our cameras are more limited than our eyes.