Tony Seeley Photography

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!

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).