Tony Seeley Photography

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.

Today was the last full day of Photoshop World – the whole thing ends tomorrow.  So today we got up at 7am and hit classes for training.  We went to 7 one-hour classes in all and spent 3 hours in the Expo, again photographing models at Westcotts stand (this time it wasn’t as creepy – but you will have to wait for those postings).

There were some activities at the conference tonight but Chris and I wanted to go out and take some pictures of Vegas, so we finished our last class and grabbed out gear and hit the road.

Obviously it was really hot outside even at 7:30 at night but we hit the strip and started to walk.  Mandalay Bay is located at one end of Las Vegas Boulevard (which is the Las Vegas Strip) but hotels like Caesars Palace and Bellagio are more in the middle, so we knew which direction to walk.

The first hotel we came to was the Luxor.  This is basically modeled after an Egyptian pyramid, with a huge Sphinx at the front.  What makes it doubly interesting is that it has this massive light coming out the top that fires up into the sky (clearly nobody has told them about saving power and being nice to the environment).

Anyway the hotel looks pretty impressive from the outside so I took a picture and that’s my image tonight.  I should point out that if you go into the Luxor it’s a HUGE disappointment, but I guess it’s really all about the external look as that’s what brings people in.

When we got home I found Master Chief going through some questionable cards!  I have no idea where he got them and I wasn’t impressed (neither was Carter by the look of things).