Valley of Fire Photo Field Trip (2008)

After the conference ended on Friday, I had planned in advance to capture some of the natural beauty of Nevada on Saturday, since landscape photography is my interest.
I had contacted a few people from the local camera club and was invited to meet up with them in the Valley of Fire which is near Lake Mead and Overton. I rented a car packed my Mamiya 645 Pro TL and film, tripod, into the car along with a little food and several bottles of water and sunblock.
Two things you don't want to be caught without in Nevada are water and sunblock. Thanks to the advice of Rick I was prepared.
I entered the park after paying the 6 dollar entry fee and didn't get too far down the road before I started to work the landscape - wow, incredible rocks jutting out of the landscape of a variety of colours, but primarily red.
I stopped at several places including the visitor's centre and then drove to the end of the park to photography the elephant rock before doubling back to Rainbow Vista and before I knew it, 1pm was creeping up on me - the time I was to meet Rick and the rest of the camera club members attending the outing. Just around the time we were meeting at a parking lot, cloud cover started to move in and added a new dimension to the landscape lighting. So the morning afforded blue sky and sun, while the afternoon softer colour and light.
Rick is also a pinhole photographer and owner of a new Nikon D300. I don't think any one there (about 15 - 20 people) was using a film camera save for me.
Once we reached our destination, we rested and Rick gave a mini-workshop/lesson on pinhole photography and made a few images with his Ovnipan pinhole camera.
I enjoyed getting to know a little bit more myself and chatting with some of the members as we hiked.
I am glad I could make the field-trip as I was able to see and photograph things I would not be able to had I booked a tour or struck out just on my own.
My thanks to Rick and the Nevada Camera Club members for a wonderful photo outing.