I don't know if I would've guessed this got the HDR treatment if you hadn't told me. I can kind of see it in the details of the covered walkway. I like the shot though.
I'll tell you where I can see the HDR treatment.. the extra noise visible on the underside of the walkway roof. I've never understood why HDR processing results in that, I'd expect it to prevent that from happening. But anyway.. first off may I congratulate you on the subtleness of the HDR. I'd like to see it used more as a technical tool, not just as a method of creating surrealistic images (although I fully admit I like the surreal images as well). The upper two thirds of the image are quite nice. But I'm not sold on the bottom third or so. The bush feels like it's too close, I feel like I want to back away from the image to avoid getting poked in the eye by the shrubbery. As I always go to painful lengths to say, this is my opinion only, your mileage may vary, but.. my feeling is that the image would be best cropped such that the upper part of the bush is still visible, and all you can see of the walkway is the outside arc of the roof, the brightly lit part. The more I look at it the more uncertain I am, though. With the full image the curved roof really adds a nice visual element that sweeps through the entire picture. It's quite appealing.. and yet somehow keeps making me think monorail. I'm lost in my attempt to critique this. I guess I have to say that I dislike the blurred spiky thing on the bottom, and think that at least it would be better framed if cropped just slightly above the spiky fence line, preferably to remove the heads from the scene too. I think they're distracting. Otherwise I think it's an interesting angle, and a good use of HDR, although I think the HDR-ed section could use some heavy noise reduction. At least the light colored ceiling, which doesn't have that much detail to begin with, so heavy handed noise reduction shouldn't hurt it too bad. But yeah, a very interesting picture, good work.
I love the fluid curve! I'm not a huge fan of HDR, but this one isn't an HDR over-kill IMO. Very cool! 8)
Very interesting composition. I love the Haunted Mansion, but I'm not sure I ever saw that angle. I agree about the shrubbery being a little too close on the bottom, but what can you do ? The curve of the roof line is very appealing.
