HDR Images

After looking through quite a few panoramas, it seems a lot of them employ HDR techniques in order to create such colourful and surreal images.

After some reading it seems like this technique is particularly useful in situations where it's difficult to get an even exposure in your scene. For example in a landscape scene it may be the case that you can have the foreground correctly exposed but with overexposed skies, or underexposed foreground and correctly exposed sky. A common method is to do both exposures and then use software such as Photoshop to combine the exposures into one image, thus resulting in an even exposure throughout.

Here is two of the more informative articles I read on this process:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/high-dynamic-range.htm

http://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/how-to-do-hdr-photography/

If this technique is necessary in order to achieve consistent exposure I may use it for my final wide angle landscape image.