First HDR HDR with my new Sigma 10-20...

Also my first image that came from this awesome new lens of mine.

This is a church that I drive by to go home everyday but never get the chance to shoot it so I took a lunch break the other day to test out the Sigma 10-20. I like the distortion in this image but i'm going to have to go back and reshoot this church so I can correct the perspective, the only thing that sucks though is that if I back up any further then Im going to have trees and such in the image that I don't necessarily want there. Oh well, can't always have everything...

It's a nice shot but it could be much better if you'd avoid the halo around the building and the vignetting in the upper right and left corners. Also, I would crop the picture. There's too much uninteresting space in the foreground (which is often the case when people use wide angle lenses). Try to do a reshoot in landscape instead of portrait.

Normally I would consider a halo an HDR flaw, but I really like it here. Because it is a church, I think the halo adds to the composition. Nice job.

I like the halo as well but without taking into PS to get rid of the halo it would be impossible to get rid of it in photomatix. The reason for the halo is the because the sun was setting directly behind the church which is the reasoning for the halo itself. I do want to do a reshoot for it to correct the distortion but if I do it horizontally I will have tree and and some construction PVC pipes in the image that will distract from the church so I opted for the vert format.

Thank you all for the comments!!!

I allways make two edits, process for the Hdr image and then tonemap once for the building/subject. get that spot on to how you want it. Then open up the Hdr again and tone map for the sky/everything else. and join the two in PS, this will get rid of any halo etc, or tonemap the image twice though this doesn't allways work so well for every image. (i sugest you map for highest photo like quality first , then go crazy, again, you wont see halo's)

Hope that helps some.

Nice image though.

Thank you for the comment. As far your technique, I learned that from Trey Ratcliff over in Stuck In Customs in which he talks about doing that. Thank you though.