Rocks, tree, and wind

[Mendoza]

 

[Brick]

I like it! Having the whole tree in the shot definitely helps. You've got a slight bit of halo action around the tree - which may not be possible to remove - pure blue sky days are hard for HDR.

Also the far left of the picture is out of focus? Or maybe that was the wind? If so you might be able to open up your 0 shot behind this one, create a layer and paint through so that you can retain a bit of detail. Just a thought - might not actually work depending on the originals.

 

[magkelly]

I love that. I'm a tree person and this one is really interesting and the scene with the stones and all is just perfect. Nice. Very organic looking shot.

 

[Mendoza]

I like it! Having the whole tree in the shot definitely helps. You've got a slight bit of halo action around the tree - which may not be possible to remove - pure blue sky days are hard for HDR.

Also the far left of the picture is out of focus? Or maybe that was the wind? If so you might be able to open up your 0 shot behind this one, create a layer and paint through so that you can retain a bit of detail. Just a thought - might not actually work depending on the originals.

The haloing/vignetting was mostly intentional. I tried processing it with a flat blue sky and didn't like it quite as much. (That said, I'll probably go back and reduce the haloing just a little bit.)
The (lower) left of the frame is a bit out of focus. It happened somewhere between the extreme wind, the aperture on my wide-angle (possibly,) the lack of contrast in the area, and the HDR processing. I tried your suggestion with some success. Definitely agree that area could be refined a bit.

Thanks for the critique!