Tbh Pete I'm not actually too keen on the HDRness of it, you seem to be going quite OTT with the HDR lately.
However, that's what you enjoy, and you seem to like it - so why not?
Back to film! I'm not sure about after HDR. At the moment its pretty damn good at producing arty results or well balanced normal looking images. So you can use it to produce artwork or comercial images.so, afer HDR what is there next?
tbh if you can come up with something original - HDR or not - it will be a winner regardless, and many of your non-hdr's are pretty good too
first one has a lot of impact, but the second one has more. very good!