HDR photography: the good, the bad, definitely not ugly!

Below are a couple of shots in raw with my Nikon D80. The first pic I adjusted the curves and levels in photoshop CS3. The second shot is the same as the first only bracketed by 0.7 to 1.3.
I took a total of 6 shots and used photoshop CS3 HDR format to bring all photos together. I then adjusted the curves to what I thought looked good. After saving my 32 bit file to a 16 bit tiff, I then brought it down to an 8 bit jpeg and what you see is what you get.
I purposely did not "edit" the images much simply because I wanted to see what kind of results I would get by just doing the basics.....simply amazing in my book!!!! HDR is the way to go if you have the time and equipment to bracket properly.

Before



After


As you can see, I did not even clean up the artifacts but the HDR is an amazingly better picture.
while most of us chasers chase run and gun style which would make HDR photography very difficult, there are a few who actually take the time to set up equipment and such. For those that do, HDR is a "new" option that will take storm photography to the next level.
If you have not tried out this new style of photography.....give it a chance.... I think you will love it, Iknow I do and I plan on doing it more and more.