Back home - always HDR?

I was musing this afternoon, as the sun set, how to retain that haunting set of silhouettes in front of the sunset.  HDR software is of great value in lighting up dark corners but I don't always want that.  So this evening's experiement was of sunset photos was taken with silhouettes in mind.

First thing I turned off the supply of light by three stops - all three bracketted shots were under-exposed - so the darkest was nearly black.

The result using HDR was:



The result just using the best that is to say most atmospheric, (under) exposed single shot



I guess I could have fought long and hard with the HDR software to get an effect as spooky as the single image - but why bother.  Sometimes its just OK not to step into HDR world :-)

As ever, the rest of my photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26110032@N02/