Adrian and I made a quick run out to Manassas National Battle Field Park on Sunday afternoon. This is where the 1st and 2nd battles of Bull Run took place during the civil war. At this point, the park is pleasant fields with some old buildings, artillery, helpful NPS rangers and some nice displays and demonstrations explaining the battles. Before the civil war it was peaceful farm land, some of it owned by freedman.

Confederate Lines

Five of the 11 confederate cannons at the site. There were thirteen at the 1st battle, of which two are currently missing.

Henry's House from the Confederate lines.

The three shots of the cannons were processed into “HDR” (high dynamic range) from single raw files. The resulting output files (which are standard dynamic range) have locally high contrast. What does that mean? I can choose to make a given color “mean” two different things in two different parts of the image and take advantage of our visual system’s method of seeing images. Because of the direct bright sunlight a standard processing of these images would have been very harsh resulting in very dark lowlights and very bright highlights.

The view from the upstairs window of the Stone House through wavy antique glass.