Power Gardening

I was looking at and reading Chaos's blip last night and one of the comment mentioned HDR so I did a search and found some information and a definition on Wikepedia. Not really much the wiser I had a look at the links to Somethings Missing's blip and I must say, they are very nice images. The kind of images I would like to take too. Then I read Missings comment about how he goes about preparing his images which it sounds like is very much the same way as I do, but he is getting better results (you can't beat talent).

So what is HDR? No, really, I am asking for some input here. Jo captured this image (I just couldn't use the chainsaw and blip myself at the same time!) and I ran it through the shadow/highlight function in Photoshop. Here is the original. Does what I have done make this image an HDR image, or is there some special software I need to look at getting?

Normally I use a number of layers and masking to bring selected areas out. I noticed that because my Canon 350D has a lower dynamic range in the shadows, I get a fair amount of noise when I try and bring more detail out. There is a limit, although for the purposes of photographic printing, it isn't really noticeable.

As you can see Jo and I have been doing some gardening. I only like power gardening. The council is doing a free green waste collection in a few weeks so we cut down a few trees that have been annoying me for a while now. We made rather more than the 2 square metres we are allowed so some of it went to the elderly lady across the road. We still have a pile in the back garden!

1/1250th sec, f 8, 400ISO, 18-55mm lens @ 18mm, Canon 350D