Hi James,
I shoot RAW and if anything try to underexpose just a bit. From the image I process two images from it. One for highlights and one for shadow areas. There is a neat little photoshop plugin on the net called HDR for dummies. If you do a search for it I'm sure you will find it. I can't remember where I got it from but I remember being told about it and searched for it. Found it no problem and the best part is it is free (-: Anyway, I think it is the best way to ad a little extra dynmic range to your images without making them look to over done but, the real key is to shoot RAW to give you the most control when processing the images. For anyone out there not using PS and would like to know how this works let me know and I can give a detailed step by step how the process works and you should be able to do it in any program that uses layers.