This time I tried doing more in-camera. Two colour shots of slightly different exposure. Two B&W shots of slightly different exposure. Instead of 4:3 framing I used 16:9. I did a very minor alignment crop and ended up with the 4 basic shots for a depth merge in Gimp. There was of course, still a lot of work in Gimp. C&C muchly appreciated this is not my usual area.
As soon as I looked at this shot in the light-box I knew that it needed just a little more cleaning up. So here is the cleaned up version.