^ you beat me to it. It's definitely HDR.
What happens is that when you take a photo, you can either get the highlights well represented and sacrifice the lowlights (which become black) or vice versa.
With HDR, you take 3 photos in an identical position. 1 best represents the highlights, another one the mid tones and yet another one the shadows (low lights). You then merge them all together and get a perfect picture representing an image as your eye would see it.
Go to Flickr and search the HDR tag. There are some impressive shots there using this technology.