The Great Filterama Challenge - from Finland

Today I arrived back in Lahti, Finland and for the Great Filterama Challenge, I set off to shoot one of my favourite equestrian statues. It is called Hakkapeliitta's Homecoming.

A Hakkapeliitta is a Finnish light cavalryman in the service of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden during the Thirty Years' War (1618 to 1648).

This famous statue in Lahti, depicts two Finnish Hakkapeliitta returning on horseback after the 30-year war.

The statue is signed by the Finnish sculptor Pentti Papinaho 1974. It symbolizes the Finnish stamina and the will to defend one's country, and the honour indicative of the Finnish cavalry soldiers.

This great equestrian bronze was unveiled on 4th October 1975 at the Lahti Hospital, and in 1991 it was moved to the present location, near the SOKOS store complex.

Larger impact, both before and after.

Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country bordered by Sweden to the west, Norway to the north and Russia to the east, while Estonia lies to the south across the Gulf of Finland. My destination for the day on Wednesday.

From the 12th until the start of the 19th century, Finland was a part of Sweden. It then became an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire until the Russian Revolution. Things were pretty bad for Finland during WWII.

Following the end of the war, Finland joined the United Nations in 1955, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1969, the European Union in 1995 and the eurozone at its inception in 1999.

Oooops, almost forgot. I emailed the original to Paladian, who has spent quite a time late in the evening processing this for me. She selected the statue, inverted the selection, and added a radial blur. This was to minimise the tree behind the image, which I thought spoiled the image. Then she spent a bit of time adding a blur lens to the extra bits inside the legs and the harness.