This is really the tale of three processes. I originally shot this with HDR in mind but when I processed it I came up with:

...which I think looks awful. I almost fell out with HDR at this and took the middle exposure to do a standard "7-point system" process in Photoshop to get this:

...which is much better but a little plain when sat next to the HDR version.

I wondered how I might get the best of both worlds so ended up loading the two images as aligned layers in Photoshop. My thought was to take the main image data from the plain one and use either the luminosity, hue, saturation or a combination from the HDR image.

The result wasn't great as it just became garish again so after messing around with different blending modes I settled on 'overlay' to make this image which I personally think is the best of the three.

So what do you think? I would love to know if you agree so please look at all three images and fave the one you like the most.

Best viewed large on black.