Remains

Thanks Roya, I’m glad you like it.

As one of the hosts at the “HDR Photography” group, I’d imagine you know a whole lot more about PP techniques than I do & that should answer at least a few of your own questions.
Like the first one; of course I used the tripod, if you look at the sky, you’ll notice obvious movement of the clouds between/during exposures. If one is taking photos in a very windy area as this one is, these things happen and taking shots without tripod is not really possible unless you don’t care about sharpness at all.

I took at least three different exposures, the margin between them was at least 1,5 EV stop or more (I usually change the exposures manually, without “bracketing”). I do not remember exactly how many exposures and what settings where used because I took around 10 shots of it and later tried out the combinations that worked out best for my taste.
I combined the exposures in CS3, using the “local adaptation” setting.
The definition of HDR image in your club is very nice & simple to understand.
But you’ve forgotten to emphasise the basic purpose of this technique (especially in landscape photography), which is to reduce the loss of information in highlights/shadows.
Of course, there are many users that are constantly overdoing it for the sake of turning their images into new kind of art.
But I use it only when the contrast between highlights and shadows is too big to capture in one single exposure. In other words, I still try to keep my final images closer to reality rather than the other way around.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep our comments here, because some other users might understand my reasons for making this image look the way it does.

Thanks & Best Regards from Iceland!

P.S.:I will not resubmit this image nor I will submit more images to your group.
From now on I’ll just observe other people’s work there.