I was curious today, wondering if it were possible to make a normally exposed image look like an HDR image.  The image on the left is the HDR image, consisting of three exposures; one normally exposed, and two images exposed at +/- 1 stop.  The three images were then combined and processed into the result that you see above.  The image on the right is a single, normally exposed image.  The curves were manipulated quite a bit to increase the contrast, and the dodge/burn tool was used to fix under/over-exposed areas of the image.  I also played with the brightness/darkness and color saturation. Here are my results.  For those of you whose eyes glazed over while reading this, my apologies.

For a more complete comparative study, here is a direct jpeg conversion of the Raw file from the camera.  This is basically what comes out of the camera before I get my hands on it.  It is very blah looking in my opinion.  Definitely not what my eye saw while composing/ snapping the image.