I am afraid there is not much left If i take away the processing. Without it, the image is flat and Lifeless. I can however tone down the tone mapping but the general consensus is in favor of the processing so it will stay that way. Thanks for the comments. Always appreciate different points of view.
I love it. I guess having entered the art world through painting, I don't get too caught up in how "real" a photo looks. I don't, however, love the usual over-processed HDR images, just because they tend to all look the same. This image doesn't have that feel to me. It just looks like a very vibrant sunset.
I just love this shot... very nice. I actually kind of like the darker first one. It gives kind of a scary 'sunset before the storm' feeling. Great, great work.
Thank you very much, single tone mapped image from a RAW file and I feel the same way. Have seen plenty of over baked images and I don't feel this fits in that category. Thanks again.