High Dynamic Rance enthusiast Ferrell McCollough has devised an interesting technique using flash and HDR exposure blending. He takes multiple images of a scene from a fixed position, but fires a flash from a different position each time and then combines the exposures using HDR software.

I'm going to be totally honest and say that I don't like Ferrell's style of HDR as you take one look at his images and you think, "that's HDR". They're too pastel, too surreal, and there's too much luminance blotching. In my opinion — and I think this is the majority opinion nowadays — good HDR images need to be subtle but effective. The whole point of HDR is that it allows you to capture scenes that are outside your camera's limits, but you still want the image to look realistic. If you can immediately tell that it's HDR then it hasn't worked.

That said, Ferrell has published a book on the subject so obviously he has his own views on the right and wrong ways to do things. Like many aspects of photography, the best advice is probably to just learn everything, listen to everyone, and then decide for yourself what works best. That multiple-flash-HDR is certainly an intriguing concept and I guarantee I'll be stealing using it first chance I get…