I thought tonight we’d go back to Las Vegas.  On my last day there we had some time before our flight left, so decided to check out some of the other hotels.  (It was pretty hot outside so the idea of spending time in an airconditioned building sounded great).  As Caesars Palace is so grand, we thought we’d go there.

Most of the hotels aren’t too keen having photographers walking around the casino taking pictures, but they don’t mind you shooting images in the shopping areas.  Which is cool because Caesars has the most amazing shopping mall – I guess that’s what you call it but it’s like no other mall I’ve ever seen.  Firstly everything is inside but to make it look like you’re walking the streets of Italy they paint the ceilings blue with fluffy clouds.  Then every now and then you reach a super elaborate section with big pillars and statues and usually a beautifully decorative ceiling with amazing sky-lights giving you lots of natural light.

Of course you can’t have a mall without a huge fountain!  They have several, some with water features that shoot water across the room.  Again very very impressive.  At the end of the shopping area (I can’t bring myself to call it a mall again), is this three floor collection of shops which again is very decorative (following the theme of Caesars Palace of course).  They have these beautifully curved escalators the take you to each floor and some of the most expensive shots your’ve ever seen.  Think of a designer label and it’s here.

As the shopping area at the end was so impressive I had to take a picture.  So I set up the tripod so it overlooked the majority of the shops and captured the image below.  The light in the area wasn’t that bright (there was some natural light coming down from skylights above) but I had to have a long exposure to get the shot.  This of course meant that any movement looked blurred but I quite like this in the image (especially the people on the escalators).

Looking at the image I think it would make a pretty cool puzzle, there’s so much detail so finding matching pieces would be fun.  The colors are all bright and the statues are great (never photographed so many boobs in my life).

The guys got some “personal” flashlights tonight, all color co-ordinated to their uniforms. I think they looked pretty cool!

Tonight I thought I’d post the last of my Seattle Walking Tour images.  Sure it’s true I have hundreds more, but this is the last one I’m going to share.  Especially as I’m about to hold my own photo walk.  Now I’ve shot and posted the Washington Mutual Tower before, but that was just the top of the tower at night (check out the posting on June 29th).  This one I think is more interesting.

We had just left Post Alley and were approaching the Seattle Art Museum and we came across this view of the tower.  Now I can bore you with details on composition, talking about line, shape, negative space and color etc., (it’s all pretty boring let me tell you I’ve read loads of books on it), but this view provided something an art major might call “interesting”.

The large sweeping curve of the walkway above and the way it almost wrapped around the Mutual Tower and the pillar with the very strange light on top appearing to be in parallel to the tower add interest.  Add to the fact that the picture is pretty monochromatic (except for the tower) draws your eyes to the subject.  When I look at the picture the large curve grabs me first and takes me from the top round to the bottom of the pillar   Then I find my eyes are drawn up the pillar, basically going completely round the tower.  Nearly every time I look at the picture I do the same thing – it’s very strange.  Sometimes I get caught in a loop going round again.

We stood on this spot for some time on the tour discussing the view and why it was interesting to the viewer (and of course we took many shots).

It is kind of a strange composition but I do find the image quite compelling.  Sure it might not be your cup of tea but I like it, so it’s my posting for tonight.

Lisa is very organized.  She already has my Halloween candy bucket all ready and filled it with goodies for me.  Tonight, I caught Master Chief and Carter “rescuing” some candy from the bucket.  Obviously I made them put it back.

On Saturday morning I visited Redmond’s Farmers Market and came across these cool little candle holders.  The lady at the stall said that if you put them on white paper and light them in a dark room they light up spreading color across the paper.  Well I couldn’t resist buying them and bringing them home to try it out.

Well tonight I got in from work and thought I’d try them out.  I got the white paper, turned the lights off and lit the candles.  Burnt my finger, turned the lights on ran my hand under the faucet for 2 minutes.  Lit the candles again and then turned off the lights.  Just as she said the colors were everywhere, at least they were for the orange candle, the blue/green one was kind-a over powered by the orange one I think.  But it looked really good anyway.

So I grabbed my tripod and set up the camera.  When I took some pictures I had either a fantastic wash of light with a totally blown out candle or a well defined flame and no colors.  To get round this I took two pictures, one with the candle correctly exposed, and one with the colors illuminating the paper, then I blended the two images together to get the finished result below.

At one point I tried putting a flashlight into the handle holders to see what that did and the colors were even more vibrant, in fact they were probably too bright and I couldn’t figure out how to easily remove the light from the image to produce the end result (the flashlight needed to be very close, almost in the holder to work), so I didn’t use those pictures.

So what you see below is pretty much what my eyes saw.  And I think it came out really well – just a shame that blue/green one didn’t have more color.

Carter and Master Chief watched the “A-Team” this afternoon.  Master Chief was inspired!

In a couple of weeks on October 13th, Scott Kelby set the date for his 5th annual World Wide Photo Walk.  Now some of you may be wondering what a photo walk is and what this has to do with today’s posting! Well read on, all will be reviled.

Firstly let me explain what a  photo walk is.  The premise is pretty simple, a number of people get together with cameras and follow a set walk and take photographs.  The walk ends at a restaurant or cafe and people share their pictures and discuss the walk.  It’s basically a social event and anyone can join – it’s also free.  You don’t have to be a professional or even have an expensive camera, you just join others for a couple of hours and capture some shots.  Scott ran one in his home town of Tampa in Florida and the had so much fun he set up a date for people to do it all over the world.  Right now there are 24,000 people taking part in 1200 cities around the world.

Anyway I really wanted to go on a walk and went online to find a local one.  There were two in Seattle but I really wanted to do something in my own city of Redmond but there weren’t any set up.  So I applied to be a leader and my application was accepted on Friday.  Now I had an idea of what walk I wanted to do, something with a bit of downtown shops and a little bit of park and even found a place to finish the walk, but still had some organizing to do.

I went to the restaurant I wanted to end up at and spoke to the manager there – now he’s really excited that we will turn up on a Saturday afternoon with hopefully a load of people.  I spoke to the Police and the security company who work in Redmond Town Center and got everything sorted there, and yesterday I walked the photo walk route and captured some shots.  I wanted to make sure the walk was long enough and there was enough interesting things to shoot.

My Walk is just over a mile long and if you’re taking pictures along the way will take around 2 hours to complete, and we end up at Redmond’s Bar and Grill at noon for lunch.  So I’m totally set.  So I published the walk online and people have started to sign up.  I’m allowed a total of 50 people, right now I have 4!  But I’m guessing it’s early days.

Yesterday Abi joined me on the walk helping me look for different things to shoot.  We found loads of subjects and I took tuns of images.  At one location we found this bright orange wall and she posed against if for a shot, and this is the image I’m posting for today.  We had a lot of fun and I’m really looking forward to the real walk.  I’ll post what happens here on the 14th.

If you want learn more or join us on the walk here is the link to the site: Redmond Photo Walk.

Carter and Master Chief’s Girl Scout Badges finally arrived for all the cookies they sold (and ate), they couldn’t agree however who should have which badge!

Just under Pike Place Market on Post Alley is the Seattle Gum wall.  The wall is outside the Market Theater and back in 1993 people in line for the theater started sticking gum to the wall just before they went inside.  Initially some used to stick gum to the wall and place a coin in the gum too (I have no idea why you would do this but that’s what they did).  Anyway the theater were pretty cross and would come outside the follow day and scrape all the gum off the wall.  This was clearly seen as a “challenge” to the people of Seattle who really went for it and covered the wall with more.  Eventually (after numerous clean ups) the theater gave up and the cite accepted the wall as a (rather discussing) tourist attraction.

The wall itself is pretty big and covers around 30 square feet.  You would be amazed just how much gum is on the wall and how high people get it!  Every now and then the city comes round and cleans up the very bottom of the wall and of course the floor where all the gum falls off.  But the leave the majority of the gum there.

The wall is a very popular location for wedding photographers (every brides dream I should imagine to get photographed here), also it’s common to see “I love you” or signs  like “Julie will you go to the prom with me”? All spelt out in gum!  So the wall looks cool (I think) and is kind-a fun, except for the smell, which is horrible.  It just smells of sticky sweet candy and really isn’t very nice at all.

However, on the other side of the Alley, the city has decreed that no gum is allowed, they even have signs saying “No Gum”.  Again, another challenge for the city residents.  They of course cover this wall with gum too and decorate the “No Gum” sign for the city too (which is nice of them I think).  Every week the city cleans the wall and the residents of the Seattle start again.

I couldn’t resist this side, I think it’s funny that it’s covered with gum too and had to get a shot.  Maybe there’s a little rebel in me too!

Now I have no idea what Orbeez are, but they start really small and grow when they are put into water.  Needless to say, Master Chief and Carter decided to make some toeday.