Originally Posted by
.:Chris:.
The easiest way for me to project it (and don't take this to mean I'm a professional photographer or complete HDR hater) is this: HDR is to photography as rice is to modified car.
You can put a body kit on a car and make it look great, but 90% of the time when you see a body kit on a car it's unpainted on a primer 240 or Civic. HDR goes the same way in that you can have an HDR pic that looks great or you can have an HDR pic that looks like 90% of the HDR pics you'll see. Make sense?
In order to fully understand when HDR should be used, you have to understand the concept of dynamic range. If a scene's dynamic range is larger than what a camera's sensor can capture then by all means you should use HDR. If you're just doing it for effect, then it is effectivley just camera rice IMO - it can look good but chances are you're just trying to turn an average picture into something that it's not.
Call me a purist, call me an HDR hater, call me whatever you want... but that's my view on it.

Dude, makes complete sense, so basically my pictures are considered the rice version of HDR

But I do understand, I only did it because it was my first time and I wanted to see how it comes out, in which I do like the way it looks but I understand what you mean, I mean all there is in the pic is my car, and then an ugly driveway in front of a dirty garage lol. My next pics I want to get in a really good location and make them come out much better, but thanks for clearing that up!