I've posted this photo before, but after seeing all the bees lately, and reading about single RAW HDR's in another thread, I thought I'd try a single RAW HDR on this bee. The first picture is the edited RAW. The second is an HDR created by taking the first picture, creating two versions at -2 EV and +2 EV and inputting these two plus the original into Photomatix.
I'm curious as to which people prefer. I tend to get sucked into HDR too much, thinking that HDR's often look "better" than the original, but I wonder if this is just me? In this case I like the way the bee has been imaged in Photomatix, but I prefer the color and background of the original (don't really like what HDR has done with the out of focus background). However, the HDR brings out the contrast in the flowers better. So for me, overall winner is HDR. Which do you prefer?
Original
Photomatix HDR Version (-2, 0, +2 EV from above RAW)