Exploring HDR (high dynamic range) photos seems to be gaining momentum in photographic circles, both professional and amateur. HDR images present overall tone values that match the what the human eye records. Almost all digital and film cameras compromise when it comes to registering the overall tonal range of a particular scene. Until HDR anyone who has ever taken a photo understands that all cameras are limited in how much they can record. HDR breaks those barriers and present images that look very close to how they actually appeared in real life. Yes, it is an emerging artistic format, and yes, as more an more people begin to experiment with the process it will become easier for the average digital photographer to produce consistent HDR pictures.

Unfortunalty, to create an HDR photo requires specialized software, Photoshop CS2, which has a built-in HDR assembler and Photomatix a dedicated HDR software are two popular choices. There are those that believe that Photoshop is the superior HDR engine. One of the reasons is that Photoshop sophisticated tone-mapping capabilities creates more realistic looking images.

Here are few samples of HDR Images:






More on HDR Imaging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

Some of the pics look animated. If source is not HDR, I doubt these softwares can come up with good rendered image, but you never know

Yes thats a problem with HDR images, although detail is high but they look unnatural.

Qutub Shahi Tombs - Hyderabad
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You also need a

digital camera that shoot RAW at 14 bit ($1000).
with bracketing
and with good lens ($1000)
and good tripod. ($200)

good monitor which can deal with 14 bit images.

In order to process the images, you need fast graphics card
which can do GPGPU processing like OpenCL.

If you going to play with RAW then you need Lightroom or Aperture
to do non-destructive image manipulation/processing.