I posted a few pictures over the last week or so from my trip to Las Vegas, and told everyone that I stayed at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.  Now I’ve never stayed there before I usually end up at Caesars Palace and because I’m stuck in the middle of the strip I’ve never made it all the way the Mandalay Bay.

When you drive into Las Vegas, this is the first hotel you come to and during the day it it looks pretty impressive as it’s all gold.  One of the nights there we grabbed our gear and went for a walk.  It was really hot out (over 100 degrees) and pretty humid for Vegas, and we walked from Mandalay to Caesars.  Along the way we took loads of pictures and tonight’s image was the first.

These hotels are really well designed, as once you get in, you can’t get out.  We literally couldn’t find the door and when we did we found ourselves on a private road for the hotel that didn’t lead anywhere, to get off the premises we had to go back inside and find another exit.

However before we did that I took this picture.  This is another example of trying to capture something in a different way or from a different perspective.  I didn’t want the typical “frontal” shot of the hotel, I wanted something different.  From the private road we could see the sides of the hotel, some really cool palm trees and a bridge (left hand side of the picture) that was above us and lead to the strip.

I shot this and when I got it off the camera it looked terrible.  The colors were all wrong and it took me a while to get them right, as we saw them that night.  But I have to say it was worth the effort as I’m very pleased with the finished image.

Carter wanted some frozen pineapple tonight while Master Chief looked on with envy.

While at Photoshop World we stayed at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.  This was a pretty nice hotel and every day we’d get up and walk down for breakfast (through the casino), walk past the shops (through the casino) and then go to the conference center (through the casino).  Pretty much all roads take you past some table or slot machine area.

Anyway one shop we past regularly was this liquor store.  What caught your eye was the gold window framing and the pink lights in the window.  It really was very pink and everyone who walked past seemed to stop and stair for a few minutes. Just across the walkway was a lit up purple waterfall but the shop got you first every time.

The trouble with this window was that it was in pretty low light.  I tried shooting this a few times but none of the images came out that well.  Then on the last day I had a tripod with me and grabbed a sneaky shot, and I’m really pleased I did as this came out really well.

I put a heavy vignette on this image as the background on the right was very bright and it pulled the eye away from the pink shop window.  So that’s why it looks darker on the right.  In the end a cool picture and a wicked liquor store – that happens to be right by the casino – what a surprise!

Tonight the guys decided to play laser tag!  It was a draw.

Last Saturday morning I was in Las Vegas and had nothing to do until my flight home later that night. “Nothing to do in Las Vegas” I hear you ask?  How is that possible?  Well I’m not really into gambling and photographing Las Vegas in the day just isn’t as much fun as shooting at night.  So I decided a field trip was in order.  As Hoover Dam was only 30 minutes away (and I’d never been) I thought that would be a cool destination.

So Chris and I hired a car and we set off (just as a side note, it cost less to hire a car for 24 hours than the taxi fair too and from downtown Las Vegas, the night before).  It took us around 45 minutes to get to Hoover Dam (not including our stop over at Lake Mead and this scary casino right by Lake Mead for some breakfast), and it was ridiculously hot – well over 100 degrees.

Now I would imagine that Hoover Dam is really fantastic at night, I’m told that it’s all lit up and looks amazing.  If truth be told we tried to hire a car the night before but we got out of the conference after the Avis rental desk was closed.  But during the day in September it’s pretty hard sunlight everywhere.  Don’t get me wrong Hoover Dam is amazing especially when you realize when it was built (back in the early 1930s), but getting really cool pictures with the sun directly over head on the border of Nevada and Arizona, is pretty difficult.

Having said that I did capture a few images that I will post over the next few weeks but the first one I’m sharing is a picture of one of the two bronze angels.

On the Nevada side of the dam there are two winged figures that flank the American flag.  Sculptor Oskar Hansen (who created these figures) has an overly complex description of what these statues are and what they represent, I really don’t understand any of that, but I thought the figures looked really great.  There are actually two of these figures (or Angels) and I tried shooting them from quite a few angles.  I tried to compose an image with the figures all in frame, but there were a load of wires crossing the top of the statues and while I could have removed those in post processing, the full size images didn’t really look that great.

The thing that caught my eye is the image below.  I loved the contrast in the statue (the fact that I caught directly lit and shadowed parts of the figure) and the sky behind – which looked great I thought.  So this is the image I chose to post.  Home you like it.

Master Chief and Carter were arguing tonight over who had the bigger brain.  Master Chief proved his was larger when he got it out to show Carter!

While in Las Vegas I literally carried my camera everywhere I went, on the first night Chris and I found the “Eye Candy” bar in the Mandalay Bay Hotel.  As it was a Tuesday night it was pretty deserted so we had the place to ourselves.  While sitting at the bar I thought the back of the bar would make a great picture.  It was so colorful and there were so many bottles I couldn’t not take a picture.

The only problem was, hotels in Las Vegas don’t like you taking pictures, especially around the casino.  I think the concern is that you capture someone who shouldn’t be there and people like their privacy (and private gambling).  So I was stuck.  I wanted to shoot the bar but was worried about getting the camera out.  So I thought I’d be sneaky.  I got the camera out and put it on the bar and sat there until the bar tender walked off.  They I quickly grabbed a few shots.

A few seconds later the barman returned and immediate figured out what I was doing.  Then he said, “Why don’t you take a picture from this location” pointing to the end of the bar, “It will look much better there”.  Chris and I were totally surprised.  We said thanks – re-setup the picture and captured the image below.  The barman even wend to the end of the bar so he wouldn’t be in the image.

Needless to say he got a nice tip.

The image came out much better than I expected.  The colors really popped and the shallow depth of field really added to the picture.  On the last day we got a little brazen with the cameras and just walked around the hotel shooting everything (with a tripod), and nobody said a thing.  So maybe you can take pictures in a Las Vegas hotel.  Either way I got some great shots.

Tonight Carter found my zoom microphone and decided to record his voice, so Master Chief managed the controls and levels while Carter sang into the mic – it was terrible.

Well today was an interesting day, I went to the Apple Store to have them look at my week old MacBook Pro and was ready to get angry with them when they said “you have a hardware issue – lets get you a new computer”.  I have to say I was very impressed.  It appeared that one of the on-board heat sensors was faulty and that’s what was causing the issue.  In hindsight, I guess it could have been because I left the computer in the trunk of the car while at Hoover Dam (and it was over 100 degrees outside – probably a lot more in the trunk) – but then Chris’ computer was in the same place and his was fine.  Anyway, I got a nice new one and it’s fully loaded up and full of images.

So I was able to select another image from the Vegas trip.  This time I’m posting another model image, again this was captured at the Westcott display at the show’s expo.  I’m calling this one Candy Girl as her hair is full of candy.  She has a cheeky grin on her face (very Pam from True Blood I thought) and gave me a look at just the right time.  I liked the set too with the deep red chandelier, having that out of focus in the background gave a nice balance to the image (although it does tend to pull you away from the model).

I was fighting for space when I captured this (again) it was total chaos at the set with loads of photographers elbowing each other trying to get in the right position.  What was funny was that in the next bay (they had two) was a male model and nobody was trying to photograph him.

I do have another model picture to post but it wasn’t that great but I’ll hang on to that in case I have an emergency.  This one I felt was good.

Today, back home, Carter and Master Chief decided to do some homework and review the notes and course notes they got a Photoshop World.