HDR ADVICE

pull down the saturation, and especially pull some of the yellow out of it.

I was coming into this thread expecting to write "don't use HDR" but that looks pretty good. You don't have any obnoxious halos that I can see.

Isn't the point of HDR so that its all exposed correctly? The tire still has a shadow and is underexposed...

Angle the seat down a little on that bike, it can't possibly be comfortable like that for that bike- gangsta lean is for BMX, DJ and DH bike seats. Flat or just slightly up is for road and xc bikes, and as a mountain biker and mechanic, it ruins the shot because my eye is drawn to that instead of the rest of the bike— which is pretty beautiful.

As far as HDR, I too was expecting to say "don't" in this thread... but it looks good, you can hardly tell it's been HDR'd, which is the way it's meant to be. Playing with the white balance a little bit may help fix the over-yellowedness of the shot.

The art of HDR in my mind is creating an image with the dynamic range closest to that of the human eye. Its an art and can mean different things to different poeple.

The whole image looks a little oversaturated and slightly... on the yellow side I guess? Its confusing because the wb looks alright.

It's all about increasing the dynamic range, not completely doing away with shadows. With sunlight and shadows like that in the shot, it's likely that if he exposed for the area of the frame lit by the sun the sky would be close to blown and those shadows would be completely black.

You do realize "correct" exposure generally has some clipping, right?

Clipping is like pooping. Everybody does it. Just accept it.

lol yeah it is my buddies bike at he is really tall so that might be why and thanks everyone i moved to a cooler color