Wow - thanks for so many nice comments. This is one of those images that spent a long time in an open window in CS4 on my computer so by the time I posted it I had almost seen too much of it to pass judgement on it anymore. Thanks for the feedback suggesting I am moving in an acceptable direction with the post processing.
I am discovering that shooting in the rain forest is a complex task given how chaotic the scenes tend to be. What is absolutely stunning to look at doesn't always frame nicely at all and visual contrasts at the scene don't always translate nicely on my camera's sensors. This last trip I tried hard to simply stand and visually absorb scenes I wanted to shoot so I could at least try to correctly reconstruct the real ambience of it when I started the post processing task. This was a scene that I really feel came close to what I saw when I was standing in front of it and I am delighted to have a set of post processing techniques in hand now to do this on other captures I have in hand.
For the record it is a single exposure with 2 different exposure translations from RAW and a total of 8 layers in the final master pshop file before flattening and sharpening for presentation. The master is over 1GB and the reduced jpg clocked in at 1.0MB with compression quality set at 10 (1.5MB at 12). Full resolution for a big print looks much nicer than the web image
I admire this photograph. It is kind of scary for some reason. The vines in the middle look like a wild forest creature. This is very well done, but I wouldn't hang it by my bed!!
