To Eleson: this is a very interesting question, which is next to “what’s art ?”. For sure there is no “perfect photography” and “darker or lighter shadows and mi-tones” is as it is always in art a question of tastes.
Yet, the point Maria2008 (I assume) and me wanted to raise was the abuse of HDR. Each technique is like a spice, say like Tabasco. What’s that sort of cooking if one pours a heavy dose of Tabasco in each meal prepared ? Some people will say “hey, dude, are you living on the moon ?! That’s called Mexican-style cuisine !!!” and I say “why not” (as I do love hot cuisine) but NOT AT EVERY MEAL. By the way, a lot of nowadays photographs are so over-processed that they tend to look like these old surrealist paintings of dolphins airbrushed swimming under a moonlight that flooded the international scene 40 years ago.
Often, less is more… if one wants to avoid to reach bad taste.
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.