This was quite an elaborate experiment. First, I took pictures from our garden on a tripod, swinging it around, so I could make a panoramic picture for the background of this scene using Stitcher.
Then, I made a HDR panoramic image by taking multiple shots at different exposures of a reflective ball I have, and unfolded and combined 'em with HDRShop.
The next step was to load it into 3DS Max, tweak the settings, add some object to test it on, and voila. Here we are. Admit it, it looks cool!