Clouds Up

I love clouds and photographing them. I like the colors, textures and shape.; if/ when I get HD video capabilities, I will capture their movement.

Is that too lame? Despite my love, I think it's a lame subject matter to photograph.

While photographing the Madison Bowling sign in the previous post, I decided to go HDR on the pretty cloud up above. I photographed it freehand first, then photographed it as a HDR image using a tri-pod.

So I wonder... was this worth to HDR this? One of the two images above is HDR and the other is not, which one is HDR? and which one is better? (im asking you, the readers)

As I have been on my HDR spree, I don't want to take the time to take HDR images when I don't have to... it takes a lot of time, both in shooting and editing, to do one of these.

PS - what do you see in the cloud? a bird, face, whale or just floating water vapors clumped together in the atmosphere