Tony Seeley Photography

Tonight I thought I’d post another hotel from Las Vegas.  This time it’s Paris.  Now I should remind everyone before I write this that I am British (yes I’m American too, but I was born and brought up in England).  So it shouldn’t be a big surprise to anyone who’s reading this that I’m not a big fan of France.  Yes I love their wine and cheese and am quite jealous of their lovely weather, but that’s about it.

I’ve visited France many times and can honestly say it’s not my favorite place.  To some extent most French people (from my experience) are not huge fans of the Brits, so the “love to hate” relationship is mutual.  I won’t bore you with all the history details (that doesn’t go back as far as you’d think) but it is what it is.

So what better place for an English guy to enjoy the Eiffel Tower and French Cuisine that Las Vegas!  I mean it’s perfect.  Enjoy some great restaurants and still feel good about myself in the morning.

This picture was taken one night from outside the Bellagio, which is across the road from Paris.  The hotel looked amazing with the Eiffel Tower and big balloon and the gold lights on the hotel.  There was a lot of traffic so I had to shoot above the cars but I don’t think it hurt the image.  So while I’m not going back to Paris France, I might well stay here.

Carter paired his Windows Phone with a Jawbone Bluetooth speaker and then got down to some cool tunes!

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.

One night while in Las Vegas we hit the road with our cameras to see what we could find.  Without a doubt the best time to photograph Vegas is when the sun goes down.  There was so much to see (both amazing buildings and very strange people) that I took hundreds of pictures.

As we were walking down the strip we came across some very strange individuals.  The latest thing (I didn’t see it last time I was there) is for people to walk the streets dressed up in costume and try to get you to photograph them for a fee.  They will either pose on their own or with you but either way it costs.  Now we had no interest in these people but as we were carrying camera’s and tripods they sometimes took an interest in us.

When we reached the Hard Rock Cafe I wanted to take a picture.  The cafe was actually on the other side of the road but if I crossed I would have been too close to get what I wanted in frame (I neglected to take my super wide lens).  So I decided to shoot it as traffic shot past (that’s what the red and yellow lines are at the bottom of the image).

Anyway as I’m trying to take a picture, this “nutta” comes up behind me dressed as Frankenstein monster.  The dude was huge, well over 6′ 5″ and he clearly wanted me to shoot him instead.  Much to other passers by enjoyment he started getting super close behind me, mimicking what I was doing.

So you have to imagine my dilemma, I’m standing there with $10,000 of camera gear with a 6′ 7″ green monster encroaching on my “personal space”.  What should I do?  Tell him to get lost, leg it, whack him with the tripod? (All crossed my mind.)  In the end I thought sod it, and completely ignored the lune and took the picture below.  Once he realized he wasn’t getting anywhere he buggered off and left me alone, and I got the shot I wanted.

I wasn’t sure what the traffic would come out like, there were a lot of cars on the road but they were all pretty low and didn’t affect the scene on the other side of the road.  So I just took a few shots and decided I’d see what it would looked like when I got home.  After processing I think this came out pretty well.  I like the red and orange lines showing the traffic lights, and the Hard Rock Cafe guitar looks great.

Carter and Master Chief have been trying different kinds of Soda recently, as you can see they have gone through quite a few!