After coming back from Norway, I realized that I need to get out more in the Washington D.C. region to do some photography day trips to satiate my need to be creative and continue improving my photo workflow.  Of course, it would be easiest, at least in the beginning and rather than going out on my own, to find a conduit that would give me easy access to photography events that are already organized and that would put me in a position to meet other like minded folks. I've found a couple of groups, mostly off of the Meetup.com site, with whom I've decided to engage.  My first outing was this Saturday morning.


We met up in Columbia, Virginia - between Richmond and Charlottesville - at a "truck graveyard." The owner of the land collects vintage trucks and farm vehicles, that I am assuming are beyond repair upon acquisition, and allows people to come and photograph for a small per person fee.  The trucks look as old as the 1930s, and range up to maybe the 1980s but that's maybe just one firetruck.  There are tow trucks, heavy duty trucks, tractors, police trucks, firetrucks, etc.


So much to explore and photograph!  Since it was my first time, I opted to just keep the wide angle lens on and use my tripod to get several images that I could blend to create an HDR photo.  In some cases, I took 10 exposures and combined them using the Nik Software HDR Efex Pro 2.  Other photographers on site were taking abstract and macro shots, but most of them had been there before and already had the typical truck body shots.  


We only had three hours on the site, and the time went by fast.  I had plans to stay in the Richmond area for the afternoon to explore that city's rich history, but as is often the case, my plans unexpectedly changed when I somehow got a rock in my radiator and had to get that replaced and my coolant leak fixed before I could even think about driving the remaining 100 miles back home. Despite that time setback, I did find time this weekend to go through and process all my photos, so here are the rest of my favorites from this truck graveyard photography field trip!