From Pole to Pole (HDR)

The story of this photo:
I am going abstract today. No architecture, no landscape… just a sculpture and the sky. This sculpture is standing near the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany: Three rainbow-colored poles about 15-20 meters high. What I like in particular about this shot are the reflections. There are actually not three poles in the picture but seven!!! I leave the rest to your interpretation. Enjoy!

Take a look at my “HDR Cookbook”! It contains some more information on my techniques.

How it was shot:
> Handheld
> Three exposures (0, -2, +2 ev) autobracketed and merged to get and HDR
> Camera: Nikon D90
> Lens: Sigma 10-20mm F3,5 EX DC HSM
> Details can be found here

How it was tonemapped:
> Preparation: developed the raw files with ACR mainly in order to reduce the CA [details]
> Photomatix version 3.1 (Detail Enhancer)

How it was post-processed:
> Post-processing was done in Photoshop
> Topaz Adjust on the entire image to get back the colors and the details [details]
> Topaz Denoise [details]
> Photo filter layer on the poles to reduce the blue cast and enhance the warm tones
> Saturation layer on the poles (increased master and a bit of blue tones)
> Levels layer on the poles to tune the brightness and the contrast
> Levels layer on the sky (brightening mid tones), masked with the inverted blue channel to even out the luminance
> Levels layer on the sky (general brightening)
> Saturation layer on the sky to tune the blue tones
> Halo reduction in the sky using a levels adjustment layer (gamma ~ 0.8) and delicate masking to blend this darker layer into those halo spots around the poles [details]
> Sharpening using the high-pass filter [details]

Any comments, feedback or criticisms are highly welcome! Thanks for viewing!