First HDR attempt C&C welcome

[Chris M]

I have seen HDR images in the past but I was clueless as to how to achieve them. This afternoon, I decided to start doing some research. After lots of reading, I decided to give it a shot. I was anxious so I just used a photo that I aready had on my computer. There is nothing special about this picture and Im actually not sure why I chose it.

Anyway, the photo is a single exposure taken with a D40. I created 3 different exposures in CS4, HDR in Photomatix, and back to CS4 for some minor tweaks. I am looking for C&C on the HDR aspect of this photo and not so much on the actual subject, composition, etc.. For me, this was a strictly an experiment as well as a learning process with HDR.

 

[dave196]

It looks very out of focus, kinda of speckled that hurts my eyes if i try to concentrate on anything in it.
Id probably bump the saturation down a bit,
not bad for a first attempt.

 

[Chris M]

It looks very out of focus, kinda of speckled that hurts my eyes if i try to concentrate on anything in it.
Id probably bump the saturation down a bit,
not bad for a first attempt.

Any ideas why it would look so out of focus? It doesn't look out of focus to me but I was wondering if it would have anything to do with me using the "fake" hdr method and not using multiple exposures taken from the camera. I am a complete beginner with this and I really am looking to get better so any and all advice is appreciated.