Ever wonder how to capture the Grass Greener, Sky Bluish with details of the clouds, the building with details of the siding? There is an easier answer to this these days.
It occurs in nature that not all objects reflect the same amount of light and hence for photographers, it's difficult to capture them all in one photo since if exposed for one setting, the other objects and areas might be either over-exposed or under-exposed.
In the film camera days, there used to be multiple exposure on single frame. Today we can expose in different frames, combine them 'after the fact' and finally get one picture. This technique is been popularly called "HDR" or "High Dynamic Range".
Here is my attempt at HDR (though I should say Photoshop - even CS4 sucks at properly merging the photos. Manually merging them makes it a lot better!)
To take HDR, key things to note:
1. Try to capture still images like landscape shots.
2. Capture one at recommend exposure, one above and one below. The more the better. So bracket the shots at least in the range of -2eV to +2eV.
3. In Photoshop, select the photos and merge them to HDR
OR
Use Photomatix which is better than photoshop.
OR
Put the photos in different layers and do the work yourself.