Gone But Not Forgotten

Cannon located at the Spring Hill Battlefield in Spring Hill, Tennessee – Olympus E520 – Olympus Zuiko 14-54mm f2.8-3.5

Today was the start of some severe thunderstorm activity. The storms were small and isolated today, but could be more severe tomorrow. With a break in the clouds, I decided to head out to see if I could catch some of the cloud activity. I started to head out to a lake that I frequent, but the sun was setting fast and I wanted to catch the sun if the clouds would cooperate. Thus, I decided on a trip to the battlefield which was much closer than the lake. Upon arrival at the battlefield I quickly determined that I wanted to get a shot of the cannon with the setting sun and clouds as the backdrop. I got there just as the sun was on the horizon. I did not have a lot of time to play with compositions as the sun was falling fast. I quickly decided on a composition and then setup my tripod and remote shutter. I metered the ground for a perfect exposure and then fired off 4 more shots underexposing by decrements of -1. I’m not a huge fan of HDR, but it has it’s uses and can be a nice tool to have in the bag. Every now and then I will make a HDR image in high dynamic situations. I don’t have any graduated filters just yet, so HDR will have to do for now.

My usually workflow with HDR processing is to download them first into Lightroom. Here I adjust the white balance as needed on each image and check for any other issues I might want to correct before merging the images. I use the software SNS-HDR. After research and some trials, I decided that SNS rendered the images more naturally than others and the price was right. After merging the images, I then bring the merged file back into Lightroom to make my final adjustments. That is my normal HDR process. I am no HDR expert by any stretch of the imagination so if any of you have some pointers, I am all ears.

Well, back to the subject. When finding this shot, I knew there was some poetry between the cannon and the setting sun. I did not put my finger on it at the moment, but when I showed my wife the final image, she said, “Gone But Not Forgotten”. Bingo, that was it! I believe I have used this title before, but it was really fitting for this capture. I tease my wife about some of her titles, but occasionally she surprises me.