Two more photographs for anyone to try.
The first - the red flower, not to difficult.
The second, I have had some success with three bracketed images - let us see what can be done with a single frame!
I look forward for some novel ideas.

david.

David, thanks for your new photos. the second one rather challenge I'll try something on them in spite of being currently very busy.

The second one is a challenge.
Here's my go, with slightly better shadows.

Of course there is noise and there are halos, but here it is:

I am torn about the beach scene results. iarga's probably looks the most natural, while I think sallyanne's gimp attempt may have my favorite shadow areas. I think sallyanne's would be the best minus the saturation boosts. Can you give that a go and re-post?

I think I agree with steven8. I still find it amazing the amount of detail it is possible to pull out of shadow areas.

Here are my attempts at my two photographs.

david.

When there are such extremes in a photograph I couldn't manage without the saulgoode Luminosity Masks. They allow me to treat different areas separately.

david.

You did well too David. Even though I used a selection I still got a 'blue' around the straw umbrellas and you didn't.
I think everyone did a good job thus far.

A bit late? My try.

Some very good examples. Can I ask what is LightZone?

It feels a bit like playing CSI doesn't it?

2-ton,

Lightzone is an Open Source photo editing software, that includes RAW processing and editing.

Here the link

Lightzoneproject

You have to register to download the software. It is realy nice software.

Issabella,
You are never too late!!!
An excellent result on what was a very difficult challenge. Everyone has excelled themselves on this one!

Not a lot of results on the red flower, which while not so difficult, I thought might have attracted some interesting artistic interpretations.

david.

Issabella, how did you get such a beautiful picture out of such a dark one? Could you briefly state what you did?

A bit of fun with the red flower - very quickly done!

david.

Pictures such as the bar on the beach are akin to hypnotizing a person to uncover memories that are there, but they do not realize it. All of the information is captured by the camera, but it is overwhelmed by the light/dark differences. Almost as though the camera gives up thinking and just spits it all out at once. To be fair, the human eye/brain does the same thing. It is the expert 'developer/hypnotist' who can bring out the hidden details.

Sallyanne came so close, but she is right in that the exterior/sky wasn't in balance. Issabella met all of the criteria, in my opinion. Perfect balance of exposure/color/saturation/shadow-highlight, etc. Not every aspect can have all of the detail in sharp relief, or you lose the depth of field. Like the paved footpath at the entrance. Not every tile is outlined, which is fine, given the distance from the photographer. As we saw in iarga's(?) version, the detail is there. It just doesn't need to be to make a well balanced image.

Awesome Issabella.

steven8,
I am agreeing with you again - Issabella is the star of the show!!!

On my version I left the interior somewhat darker to try and create the contrast of the hot outside with the cool interior, I perhaps overdid it slightly.
At the entrance are not tiles, they are wooden boards, originally varnished in two shades - now wearing thin.

But, after all this discussion, my frappe (iced coffee) on the table on the left is getting warm!

david.