Greetings from Las Vegas, Nevada to all my faithful followers, loyal friends and random stumble uponers. Autumn is my favorite time of the year in Las Vegas. The weather is fantastic. Temperatures are comfortable, in the upper 60s to the upper 70s (*F), usually no rain, few clouds, and not too much wind. Plus, it's not going to be blazing hot for 6-8 months. I like to joke that we have three seasons in Las Vegas: cool (our short winter), comfortable (most of winter, parts of autumn and spring), and fucking hot (parts of spring and autumn, and all of summer)!
So, I'm taking advantage of the fantastic weather and getting as many shoots in as I can before the weather turns too hot again. However, next summer, I think I'll do more night shoots... astrophotography, light painting, cityscapes and model shoots.
From a photography perspective, it's been a relatively busy November for me so far, and it's going to get busy again next week. Plus, I turned down two shoots because I just cannot afford them right now (plus Mrs. DeadGuitarist got a little miffed when I told her the shoots were all paid shoots... that is, me paying the model). Four in a month at $200 per shoot is just too much, even though I really wanted to shoot with the two models I turned down. I might be able to shoot with one of them in February, when she returns to Las Vegas.
Friday, 03 November 2017
I shot with the model I worked with in October again, this time in the Downtown Las Vegas Arts District. There are many cool street art murals to use as backdrops. I hadn't been out there in a couple of years so I knew some of them would be different, but I was really happy to see that my favorite one was not painted over. We used it as the backdrop for our first stop. The mural is called Love Forever. Here's an unedited preview.
There is a yellow glow to these photos. Many of the streetlights in Las Vegas are those orange, energy saving, bulbs, and I shot without flash or additional artificial lighting here. Everywhere else I had to use my external flash because there wasn't enough light, but in front of Love Forever, there was enough light that I didn't need additional artificial light.
I'm waiting for her to select the photos she wants before I cull and process. But, I realized the other day, that somehow, and quite accidentally, I created two Lightroom catalogs for this shoot, so I'll use one of them to cull and process for myself and the other one for the photos she chooses, whenever she gets around to it.
Monday, 06 November 2017
I shot with Jamie Lee Bauern on the Las Vegas Strip @ Tropicana Avenue. Jamie Lee's posing is so fluid, exciting, dynamic... I don't know the right word, but all, and more, apply. I wasn't going to do this shoot, but Jamie Lee announced that she is planning to scale back her modeling and get back into acting, so I changed my mind and took the gig since it might be the only time I get to shoot with her.
I know this photo isn't tack sharp (it wasn't before I applied noise reduction either), but because I like the pose so much, I just couldn't throw it away. I took nearly 500 photos; 66 of the photos made the final set, and I kept another 26 as well. Surprisingly, it was darker on the Strip than I thought it would be, so I used on-camera, but external, flash. I angle the flash head (up for landscape photos and to the left for portrait photos) so that it is not pointing directly at, and doesn't wash, out the model. Sometimes, I'll bounce the flash off a small white or silver reflector if I can't get the angle I need.
We shot in front of the Tropicana Hotel & Casino with New York, New York in the background, in front of the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino with its small fountains as the background, in the middle of the footbridge between the MGM Grand and New York, New York with the Strip as the background, some steps near an entrance to the New York, New York Hotel & Casino, and in front of the Luxor Hotel & Casino, using some of the statues as props. The backgrounds are dark though. Flash does that.
As I was heading back to the Excalibur Hotel & Casino on the footbridge, I looked out toward the Strip. Glad I did. Ended up taking another almost 300 photos of the Las Vegas Strip, of which I kept 35. I wanted to do some long light trails, but exposures over about a second were too bright and I didn't bring any neutral density filters with me. But I did get some short ones. I could have reduced the exposure of those shots in Lightroom to see what I'd get, but decided not to.
I should blur out the sign on the hotel furthest away from me (click the photo and view larger to see why)
This week is pretty empty, though I will be taking some photos at work during a Tech Talk (sort of training on AngularJS) given by one of our software developers and a team photo, all for Marketing (and presumably to post on Workplace --- Facebook for workplaces... merp 🙄 ). I took some a week or two ago of the office (showing people working).
Saturday, 18 November 2017
This starts out my birthday week! And I'm taking three (3) vacation days, but combined with holidays and weekends, I get nine (9) days off. I do this almost every year.
I'm heading out to Dante's View in Death Valley National Park to shoot the Leonids Meteor Shower. This shoot will stretch into Sunday. I realize the Leonids aren't a super spectacular meteor shower with an average of 10-20 meteors per hour, but I'm going anyway. My goal is to take multiple shots (lots in fact), stack them in Deep Sky Stacker, and, hopefully, make the meteor shower look more impressive than it actually was. The glow of Las Vegas and Pahrump will be visible in the photo(s), but the results should be really cool. I'll probably get there early enough to take some sunset photos, and find a good spot for the astrophotography shots before the sun disappears.
Sunday, 19 November 2017
After sleeping away half the day, Mrs. DeadGuitarist and I will be attending our first Vegas Golden Knights hockey game. They play the Los Angeles Kings. That's fitting. The Kings were my favorite hockey team until we got the Golden Knights. The team is doing well: 2nd place in the Pacific Division, behind the Kings, and 3rd in the Western Conference. There's still a lot of season left, but can the Golden Knights make the Stanley Cup Playoffs in their inaugural season? It's never been done but if they keep it up, they will.
Monday, 20 November 2017
I was going to go to Spring Mountain Ranch State Park, which is a short 20 minute drive from my house, but I changed my mind last week and decided to make the 3-hour one way trip to Cathedral Gorge State Park. I'll probably stay there past sunset for sunset and astrophotography. But not too late because...
Tuesday, 21 November 2017
Happy Birthday to ME! Getting up early to go out and photograph birds at the Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve. I was going to spend the entire morning there, but, I got a property shoot at the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation's Britney Spears Campus last week. My brother did the interior design, and I offered to shoot some photos for his interior design portfolio. I wish I could have gone for the Grand Opening last Saturday and gotten some photos of Britney. I have mad respect for her now. She donated a lot of money toward this new facility. I think she donated $1,000,000 US. After, I'm done here, I'm touring a studio not far from my house. Their hourly rates are very reasonable. I hope to use it someday for some indoor shoots, especially when I can book several paid shoots (as in, I get paid) for the same day. I'll have time after the tour, so maybe I'll head over to Exploration Peak Park and take a 360* time lapse with the new motorized tripod mount and intervalometer I just bought, as well as some other shots of the Las Vegas Valley from the top of the peak.
Wednesday, 22 November 2017
Going out to Valley of Fire State Park. I've lived in Las Vegas since 1996 (except from October 2007 to February 2011, when we lived in Central Virginia... near Charlottesville) and I've never been to Valley of Fire. It's about time I went.
Thursday, 23 November 2017
Happy Thanksgiving (US)! Because it's just the two of us, we don't cook holiday dinners any more. So Mrs. DeadGuitarist and I will be going to Hofbrau House for dinner. They do serve a "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner, but we always opt for German cuisine. We go there just about every year for ThanksgivingWe do the Jewish thing for Christmas... Chinese.
Black Friday, 24 November 2017
We avoid shopping like the plague! So maybe I'll run out to Spring Mountain Ranch State Park for part of the day to do a little hiking and shoot some new photos there.
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Whew! That's a lot...
One of my birthday presents from Mrs. DeadGuitarist (yes, I got it already) is a slide scanner. I scanned some slides from 1984. They are from Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Grand Canyon (north rim outside the actual park) and a couple from base camp atop Angel Peak in the Spring Mountains west of Las Vegas. I took these during my Geology Field Study course required for my BS Geology degree. Although I cleaned the slides, there are a lot of imperfections, scratches and stuff, and the slide scanner isn't the best. On top of that, it's highly likely that the photos aren't tack sharp either. So resulting digital scans suck ass. I'm not going to fix the imperfections though, because I really like the vintage feel they give to the photos. One even has a large light leak. Super cool! Anyway, I'll be posting those photos somewhere after I do some post-processing to them.
My other birthday gift from Mrs. DeadGuitarist (yes, I got it already too) is a Lowepro camera backpack, which I have been wanting for quite some time. It's a daypack. It has room for a lot of my gear, but not all. I'll have to get a bigger one for shoots where I might need more gear, but it'll work just fine for these day trips where I only need my Nikon D3300 and Konica film camera (if I decide to bring it).
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That's all for now. I'm available for Christmas portraits and model shoots (or any other kind of shoot you have in mind). For model shoots, I'm looking to do lingerie, boudoir, implied nude, and/or artistic nude shoots. If you want to book a shoot, head over to my website and book one. While, I have specified my rates, they are negotiable, as is just about anything regarding my photoshoots, so, if you cannot afford the posted rate, feel free to drop me a note; we can talk about it and figure something out. I will do TFP shoots too. While you're there, take a look at the sample photos and read the articles too.
In case you didn't know, I do have a Patreon page.
Okay, that's really all for now.
Stay Tuned...
DeadGuitarist
