A psuedo-HDR of the lighthouse at Atkinson Point in West Vancouver (also known as Lighthouse Park).
What do I mean by Pseudo-HDR?
Typically, HDR photograph consists of multiple exposures such as -3, 0, +3. Though when you do not take multiple-exposures you can sometimes still create an HDR looking image like the one above. Granted, the program you use (such as Photomatix Pro) will help a lot when using 1 RAW file. Yes, try and use RAW (or uncompressed) images to create your HDR photos as the more information the photo contains, the better your results can be.
Anyway, to me, a Pseudo-HDR is an image processed the using similar techniques as a multiple-exposure but making us of just 1 photo. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn’t, but I find it depends on the image being processed ie, what the image is and how dynamic the lighting could/can be.