During my road trip through the Capital Cities of the Northeast, I visited the Old North Cemetery in Concord, New Hampshire. Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, is buried in this cemetery. So, on my way back to the hotel after dinner, I stopped to see the tomb.

I arrived at the cemetery at dusk. I had difficulty finding the tomb. There aren't any signs pointing the way. I wanted to find the tombstone before dark so that I could capture a few photographs. Fortunately, a man was walking his dog through the cemetery and was able to help me find it.

The burial site is surprisingly unassuming for a President of the United States. Only the small flags in front of the tombstone give any indication that a person of historic significance is buried here. There are many other tombstones in the vicinity that are at least as large as this one. The low key treatment might in part be due to the general consensus that Franklin Pierce was one of the nation's least effective Presidents.

Pierce suffered his share of tragedies. All three of his sons died in childhood. The first died in infancy and the second of disease at age four. A few weeks after his election to the Presidency, the family was riding on a train that crashed. Pierce and his wife survived the accident, but Pierce's eleven year old son died in the crash. Pierce, his wife and two sons are all buried at this site.

President Franklin Pierce TombTomb of President Franklin Pierce at the Old North Cemetery at N State Street in Concord, New Hampshire on July 28, 2015 This picture presented some challenges from a photography perspective. I could only back up a few feet from the tombstone, so a very wide angle lens was required. I used my Nikon 14-24 lens at the widest focal length. Also, I was shooting into the setting sun, so I bracketed five exposures (one stop apart) and blended them together during post processing to create a high dynamic range (HDR) image.