The Giant Praying Hands of Webb City, Missouri in 360° Panorama

I was still cruising along Route 66 the day I shot this pano on my way to check out the Hornet Spooklight when I came upon the Giant Praying Hands in Webb City, Missouri. Weighing in at about a 100-tons, these hands were cast in concrete by Jack Dawson, who at the time was a 20 year old college student, back in 1972. Due to the lighting conditions, I attempted to pull out the shadows by exposure bracketing (+1/0/-1 EV) the photos and processing them using HDR software. In this case I went with Photomatix because it has a "de-ghosting" feature which means that the moving car on the highway below and  American flag that was waving in the breeze would not render strangely in the final image.  Most of the time I'm not too crazy about HDR photos. The images that are produced using this technique seem too unnatural and sickeningly sweet to my eye but for what I was going for in this shot, I think it works well enough.