altar II

I like the idea behind this image but it could work so much better, the harshness by the use of HDR takes away too much instead of adding to the image, if the strength of the tone mapping is reduced you would see much more detail, at the moment they are lost within the light and the colour.

If you tone map again and reduce the intensity you will see a difference, reduce the light, the micro contrast and the colour and at the same time increase the micro smoothing and the image will pop more, you will though need to be aware of the noise issue but there are many plug ins out there that can fix this.

I would also consider knocking the colour back, convert it to black and white in another layer and then reduce the opacity of said layer until you have a better colour balance before merging the layers.

Its a good image that could be so much better.