I really wanted to post a Freemont Street picture from my trip to Las Vegas, but none of them turned out that great. For example in this example I didn’t get the Freemont neon sign in the image at the top of the frame! What was I thinking.
If you’ve ever been to Freemont in Vegas you probably understand the problem. There are a lot of distractions here and I may not have been focused (mentally) on doing a great job. But as it was such a funny evening I thought I’d post the image and tell you about it.
I think this was the Friday night after the conference and we wanted to go to Freemont to capture some cool neon lights. So we jumped in a cab and off we set. Now this is really down-town Las Vegas and not that far from the strip. But on this Friday night the traffic was unbelievably bad. We were sat in one lane on the freeway (I’ve no idea why we took the freeway) while everyone else went past. When you are in a strange city you really have to trust your taxi driver, but this guy was taking liberties. Eventually we got off the freeway and he then changed into the lane that had been driving past us for the last 5 minutes. When we arrived at Freemont Street and the charge was $45!
Apparently the reason for the bad traffic was there was a Gay Rights Pride march through town and the place was packed with people. You have NEVER seen anything like it, it was actually pretty funny. Like the strip there were numerous people in costume waiting for you to ask them to pose for a picture, only this time the costumes were a little more “mature” in nature. I won’t elaborate here but if you see me ask. Needless to say I have lots of interesting pictures that I’ll never post here.
After an hour there all the lights went off and we were treated to a video rock concert on the ceiling. Pretty fun but I kept checking my wallet as it was a pick pockets dream. While we watched the show above we did encounter one baby in a stroller staring up and his face was a picture. Pity I didn’t capture it.
Anyway I captured the shot below that does show the neon lights overhead pretty well. The people in the image at the bottom of the picture were pretty clear and some weren’t “family friendly” so I blurred them deliberately. This is however one time where I wish I was back there with my side angle lens. I’d love to try and capture this street again. Maybe next year.
The guys decided to have a walkie talkie conversation tonight, but they probably should have stood further apart.
