My first HDR photo

I had been wanting to try HDR photography (read more about HDR here) for a while and finally got serious about learning the camera settings and getting the software needed to actually do it. So while I was waiting for it to get dark before opening the telescope to run the public viewing night, I decided to give it a go. I didn't have time to grab a tripod, so I carefully balanced the camera in a drainage hole in the wall around our roof and took a few bracketed shots (-2, 0, +2). The next day I combined them in Photomatix Pro and played with a few settings to create the image below. I posted it to Facebook and Google+ and got a lot of nice feedback from my friends, which is encouraging! For a first attempt, I'm pretty pleased with the results. I took a few more bracketed shots this past week (with a tripod and from some other parts of the roof) and I'll be posting them here in the next few weeks, as well as on my Flickr account.