This is an HDR shot of Two Jack Lake near Banff, Canada. In order to show the sunlight glinting off the water at the same time as the fall colors in the foreground, it was necessary to employ the magic of Photomatix's HDR image processing. It was able to compress my camera's 14-bit-per-pixel-color dynamic brightness range down to the 8-bit-per-pixel-color of standard displays and printing systems. The result most closely matches what I saw with my own eyes; I was able to observe the scene with both the sun's reflection and the fall leaves at the same time. Indeed, that is the goal of HDR.
But it still wasn't quite right. When I looked at the actual sunlight reflection, my eyes had to adjust -- I could sense that there was extra brightness there. I was squinting slightly since it was, after all, very bright.
Some day, screens will break out of the legacy 8-bit-per-pixel-color and display a higher dynamic range. They will glow so brightly that you'll need to squint when faced with reflected sunlight.
Metallic printing paper gives us a preview. I'm currently looking at an 8x10 print of the photo above, in a nice matted frame. Each mini-sun from the lake wavelets is glowing out at me. It's even bright enough to inspire slight squinting. The print reflects ambient light -- white is still white, yellow is still yellow -- but it jumps out at the viewer. So, things that are full-on-white in the photo (RGB 127,127,127) are actually brighter-than-white. (This is an option from Mpix, the photo service I use for "nice" prints to be framed, etc.)
It's not perfect of course, since you have to be standing in just the right place to see the effect. But it's a little hint of what might come in the future with High Dynamic Range displays.
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