In the Field with the Tamron 18-400mm VC Lens

I was literally "in the field" during the Tamron 18-400mm VC Lens evaluation when this scene availed itself. The sun had set, the sky took on great color and the foreground seemed scenic enough. This lens has an incredible range of focal lengths available, so I simply needed to select the distance that gave me the compression I was looking for and adjust the focal length to retain the desired elements in the frame. That was easy.
 
Still, two significant challenges remained. The first was the huge dynamic range and the second was the color balance disparity. Those two issues were resolved by HDR processing. One image was captured for proper exposure of the sky while a second image was exposed brighter and processed with a warmer color balance for use in the non-sky portion of the image. The HDR processing utilized Photomatix along with some manual adjustment in Photoshop.
 
I jogged/walked close to 3 mi (4.8 km) on this afternoon and the Tamron 18-400mm and Canon EOS 80D combination in a Lowepro Toploader Zoom 50 AW (a snug fit with an L-bracket installed) was easy to have along. The 18-400mm focal length left little to want in terms of angles of view. The Really Right Stuff TQC-14 Tripod and BH-30 Ball Head performed stellarly despite the very cold conditions and these were also easy to carry.