I went through a phase of trying out HDR photography, and it really was hit and miss. Sometimes the colours would map out nicely, other times it looked like a drunken impressionist had thrown his toys out of the pram. This was about the best of them.
For the less geeky members of the .org, HDR involves taking three images (under-exposed, normal, over-exposed) then using software to munge them together and get one image with detail everywhere from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights. It sounds simple, but re-mapping the colours frequently produced garbage. So there was plenty of 'hit the button and hope' involved.