Mean looking car for sure! That first shot is great, perfect angle and lensing to bring out the look of the car!
Is that hood made with a 1 or 2-inch rise? looks great! One day I'd like to get a nice simple cowl like that, but only 1 or 2 inches
an over-rated effect that gets over-used (in my opinion, heh!)
"tone mapping" however, is the correct term however for what most people call "HDR", if you feel like reading about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_mapping
In short, HDR images (High dynamic range) is a series of bracketed exposures that captures more highlight and shadow detail than would normally be captured in one take. Combined, they make an HDR/EXR file, when "tone mapped" the highlights and shadows get pushed together to be visible in one image, most techniques yield an effect of strange ringing and haloing around dark and light objects when compressing the highlights and shadows, this is the effect that alot of people seem to like. It can be done with just one exposure to get just the haloing effect and strange contrast/coloring effects, however, yeilding no greater detail in the shadows and highlights than what was originally captured in the single image. Tone mapping *can* be done to yield a fairly natural looking image, however most people seem to prefer the big "photoshopped" looking halos around objects and the tweaked looking contrast/colors.
