This "My First HDR" group looks like a fun place to put our first HDR effort. Here's mine.
I started using HDR when Adobe added the capability to CS2. I needed it because of the lighting difficulties in panoramic photography: at some point you're looking into the sun. What I liked about this shot was being able to get the details in the clouds and also the reflections in the solar panels. I never liked Adobe's HDR, so I didn't get excited about HDR until I learned about Photomatix a few months later. Now I use HDR techniques on over 90% of my shots that I care about.
You can use QuickTime to view the panorama created from this picture
