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This image was taken at sunrise on the Chipola River in northwest Florida.  Using a tripod, I took four separate exposures of the same scene, keeping iso, focal length and aperture the same.  Shutter speed ranged from 0.6 seconds to 2.5 seconds.

The first picture shown below is my opinion of the best single exposure at 1.6 seconds:

The next image of the same scene is a hdr rendering consisting of all four exposures using photomatix hdr software:

The first single exposure photo to me has a bit more contrast, while the second hdr photo better reveals the river banks and some of the forest beyond the river.  In this case, the initial single exposure photo may be more indicative of what I actually witnessed, as the shadows beyond the river banks were likely less visible than the hdr photo renders.  In scenes with greater variations of contrast, the hdr photo may very well be closer to what the human eye absorbs.

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