I've never been a huge fan of HDR. I use it, but only when the dynamic range of the scene calls for it. I used to do the same thing with sets of graduated ND filters, now it's just easier to bracket then HDR process.
1st shot bugs me because the horizon is right in the middle, (rule of thirds
) I would have shot from a lower angle to bump the horizon down and shown more of those high contrast clouds.
2nd, 3rd and 5th ones the reds and magenta are
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY over saturated.
4th one,
I like the soft desaturation of the background.
6th one, technically the best by far I'd say, composition, lighting, focus and depth of field are spot on. Only thing is with the desaturated background, need to fix those orange blotches in the upper right.
As someone else pointed out, flower shots don't excite me much. BUT they ARE great subjects to learn the basics of lighting, composition, DOF, focus, motion blur, etc on.
If you really wanna do spectacular flower shots, get a fast telephoto lens, something like a 90mm 2.8 macro, or even a 85mm 1.4 if you have lotsa $$$.
