Time Lapse No 18 - Las Vegas, Nov 2011

Best viewed full screen, with sound on.





That is all.

Where Does the Time Go?

I've really fallen off of the blogging bandwagon this year. I won't make excuses, I'm just not into it. However I do want to put some more photos here to help keep people updated... after all this is where you go if you type in the website from my business cards, I should have something here.





More of the same with the city and nature photos. I haven't taken a whole lot of pictures this year, but I do still get out a little to enjoy myself when I have some time. Nothing takes my mind off of my problems like three hours at sunset with my camera in a nice setting.





I still try to catch the special events here in Portland. Although I did miss two of the big fireworks displays for the year, I made it to the fourth of July. Hitting up the Rose Festival fleet was a little easier, since they were around for several days.







I've found myself working in the Poker industry this year. I really enjoy what I am doing now, it's fun and I am meeting a lot of great new people. I was lucky enough to visit Vegas during the World Series of Poker this year, it was a blast and I hope I can make it back in 2012.

My photography has also come in handy at the club where I spend most of my time. I get some great pictures of the local players, although few are as good as the shot of my fellow dealer Clint, above.

Anyway, just checking in. Thanks for taking a look!

Time Lapse Photography: Las Vegas Fountains

First off, I want to offer no thanks whatsoever to Windows Movie Maker. Unfortunately, the longest time lapse video I can seem to get out of it is about two minutes. Anything longer, and it just freezes up every two minutes.

So I guess you can thank that program for keeping this a more reasonable length. It's probably for the best.

I shot these in Vegas during my time between tournaments. I thought the passage of all the people on the strip might be interesting, but I wanted to be able to catch people stopping and doing things too. As I was looking for a suitable background, I came across a fountain where people were sitting and kind of just waiting around.

Well, it didn't take too long for the two ideas to come together, and here you go.

If I feel like battling Movie Maker some more, there's another one of these to come from my trip...

Las Vegas Photo Dump

It's funny to think that it was only a week ago that I came back from Vegas.  It sure seems like longer than that!  Unfortunately, I don't have any particularly interesting stories to tell about my trip, so it's been kind of tough to think of a narrative to accompany the photos.



For the volcano shots, I did a lot of scouting around before the first show.  I picked out two spots where I thought I would be able to get a clear view of the excitement.  I didn't bring a book or my headphones or anything, so it was pretty dull waiting around and holding my spot for the two shows, but I dutifully stood at the fence waiting for thirty minutes before each show.



At one point (still at the volcano) a couple standing behind me (who arrived five minutes before it started) began complaining about my tripod.  Which I had carefully set to only stand as wide as my shoulders.  It's not like the tripod was any wider than I was, but people still complained.  I just don't get it.



Have I mentioned how difficult it is to take a picture of a black building at night?  Well, it is.  Thank goodness they have those white lights running up the side.



This is the multi-billion dollar "Project City Center" that is slated to begin opening this winter.  It's amazing to think of all those condominiums that they are still building in Las Vegas.  I wonder what they will do with them?  It's not like they have a hotel or apartment shortage.  I have a hard time thinking this place won't lose some guys in Dubai a ton of money.



Another change since my last visit.  Still a very difficult hotel to take a decent picture of, the setting sun at least gave me some cover by shadowing the ugly street part up.  The Encore looks nice, but Wynn isn't much to visit, especially as far north on the strip as it lies.  So I didn't take any time to head down there and settled for this better-than-nothing shot.



I don't think there are a lot of opportunities to get dramatic clouds in Vegas.  I guess you'd have to be there the two or three days a year when storms roll through.  I'm glad I don't live there, because I'd get pretty frustrated waiting for them.



One of these days I'll actually cough up the dough to stay at Caesar's.  I don't know why I like this place so much, but it still is my favorite spot on the strip.  It's just got the nostalgia of old Vegas but with a completely modern and sophisticated feel. 

Their casino is huge and they really do a lot to maintain their status as a high class place.  They have a pretty good poker room, which is a plus for me.  Finally, my grandpa spent a lot of time in Caesar's during the sixties and seventies, so the emotional link is there too.

Las Vegas Highlight Reel

I've spent the last week in Las Vegas.  While I spent most of my time playing poker, I did take my camera along and did some shooting when I wasn't in a tournament.



I started with the easiest subject, the fountains at the Bellagio.  I think the experience of photographing those ballerinas a few weeks ago came in really handy, as I was able to play with the timing and try to catch the movement of the water in a predictable manner.  I'll have more Bellagio shots to come shortly.

I stayed at a center strip hotel (the reasonably priced Bally's) and had great access to the big name casinos.  I didn't get particularly creative or unique with my shots. 



In a sense, it's hard to do anything but staged shots in Vegas, as there is so much going on.  Power lines are everywhere, and ads cover almost every bit of open space.  You can see several in this shot, although I did my best to exclude them.  I couldn't really go any wider here, or else the street lights and construction cones and such would start to get in the way.

Down at the south end of the strip, I did my best to get an interesting shot of the MGM.  You can see the construction cones and standing traffic (this signal took 120 seconds to cycle through) but all in all I think it turned out pretty good.



There's a huge construction project going on on this end of the strip, Project Cityscape (I took a few photos you'll see later) so it really felt isolated.  To get back to the center of the strip, I had to walk about a half mile, maybe a mile, through a narrow construction walkway, often covered, with people who are much slower than I.

I'm so glad I didn't stay down at this end like I have in the past.

On Thursday and Friday, I really focused on playing poker, and my photography took sort of a back seat.  I had a couple of hours between tournaments on Thursday evening and decided to do a few daytime shots.



Here we see the "Eiffel Tower" at the Paris casino.  Again, there are basically only two shots of this that work.  This one, and another you may see later, taken from the south.  Otherwise, you'll have a streetlight in the way, or a rail or a big garbage bin or billboard or some such BS.

It had been a long week, and on my final night as I returned to Bally's, I decided I would make a real effort to get this cool long exposure shot of myself.  It took a lot of tries, most of them embarassing as I knelt down like an idiot on the moving walkway and spent a minute or so repeatedly trying to stay still for two seconds.



It wasn't easy.  But I think I did all right with this one.  Although I look terrible!  In my defense, it's one in the morning... although I'm not sure that excuses those bags under my eyes.  Ugh!

The Fountains at the Bellagio

As most of you know, I spent last week in Las Vegas.  I did pretty well playing in the poker tournaments, although not quite well enough to bring home a profit.  I had a good time tho, and really enjoyed hanging out in this exciting, lively part of the world.  When I wasn't playing poker or eating delicious buffets, I was carrying around my camera and tripod and taking some photos.  Unfortunately, as I mentioned yesterday, I had a hard time getting creative in this land of streetlights, power lines, and advertisements.  Still, I did my best to bring home some nice shots, even if many of them are the standard views you see from Las Vegas.



The Bellagio Fountains were a natural starting point for me.  The Bellagio is right across the street from both Caesar's Palace, where I was playing poker, and Bally's, where I was staying.  So I had to walk right past it in the evenings on my way back to the hotel from the tournaments, and of course it was very handy when I was leaving the hotel after gathering my camera.  Plus, of course, they really are beautiful.



The great thing about these fountains is that they run four times an hour, and about five minutes at a time.  So I had plenty of opportunity to get a lot of shots and try different setting combinations to get the right effects.  I really did get a lot of pretty shots of these fountains, and it was hard to narrow them down to just these five or six... I have another 20 or 30 I'd like to share, but they'll never see the light of day.  I did upload a few extra to Flickr, tho, so you may be able to see them there.



Although they played a lot of different music for the fountains, all I ever can think of is Celine Dion and "My Heart Will Go On"... the song I heard when I first saw the fountains back in 2001.  The music from this trip was a lot better, and the fountains really are amazing with their blasts of water, but my mind only seems to bring up that stupid song.

They play the Star Spangled Banner at midnight when they shut down the fountains for the day, which I found to be nice.  Like the old days, when the TV used to go off the air and they'd play the national anthem then, too.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to see if the lake displayed a test pattern.



I hope you've enjoyed.  Vegas doesn't put on the level of free shows that they did in the heyday, but that's OK.  I am happy to see what they do still have.  I didn't get a chance to shoot the Sirens at TI, because they are very very crowded, but next up is a series of shots of the volcano at the Mirage.