The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 4

The trip from the North Rim to Las Vegas proved surprisingly uneventful. Fatigue and exhaustion probably played a significant role in that. We ended up skipping Pipe Spring National Monument, a fantastic historical site The Wife and I stumbled upon during our honeymoon road trip. We gawked at the unfinished houses in Colorado City of the Mormon tax cheats. We had lunch at a Del Taco in St. George (I hadn't thought of Del Taco since they ran a few commercials on Houston television in the very early '80s. I'd never eaten at one. The verdict? Nothing to write home about). Eventually we made it to Sin City, and this is where we stayed:

I'm a fan of fantasy and renaissance festivals, and enjoy medieval history, so this should've been the prefect hotel for the family to stay at. It would've been, too, if the Excalibur hadn't been the most half-assed of all the theme casinos in Las Vegas. That garish faux-castle facade? That's as good as it gets. Aside from the over-priced joust/dinner show that any renaissance festival can top, there just isn't much else here to back up the theme. There's some fake stonework through the foyers and a sad suit of armor here and there, but beyond that it's generic casino and Super 8 motel rooms. No, scratch that. Super 8 motels at least have refrigerators and coffee machines in their rooms. Excalibur didn't. They also wanted to charge 25 cents a minute for internet access. No thank you. The room really was pathetic when compared to the one The Wife and I stayed in at the Stardust, which was sadly imploded in 2006 and is now an abandoned construction site.

Las Vegas and I, it should be pointed out, don't really get along. My wide-eyed wonder lasted about two hours back when I first visited on my honeymoon. I learned quickly that I don't have the gambling gene. I don't get excited about paying $10 for watered-down drinks, $40 for mediocre buffets or $150-plus for whatever show I can catch in Austin next week for $30. The sleaze was a major turnoff as well--now, I'm a fan of the erotic, but Vegas can make donkey shows in Tijuana look classy by comparison. I'm more interested in the historical and quirky stuff. I wanted to visit the historic Las Vegas Springs Preserve, but admission was $20 for adults and $10 for kids. No thank you, again. We had to settle for the nos-closed Liberache Museum (which I got the nifty shot of above in infrared).

The fact that I'd agreed to spend an extra day in Vegas should no way be construed as my endorsement of the place. I took the kids to the pool and the rest of the time we went on little excursions to Hoover Dam and the like. We also took them to Caesar's Palace so they could see what a themed casino looks like when it's done right. And as much as I dislike Vegas, I have to admit I could spend hours admiring the architecture of Caesar's. The two false-color infrared photos of fountains above were taken during this outing.

About the only concession to the superficial glitz of Las Vegas I made was a photo excursion down the Strip to get in some night photography of the dazzling buildings. Above are two shots of the Luxor, which was right next door to Excalibur. As botched as Excalibur's theme was, the Luxor did the ancient Egyptian motif right.

Across the street was the MGM Grand, quite an imposing, if not magisterial, building. I didn't go in, but the outside certainly gave an impression of old-school Hollywood, back in the days when MGM was a real studio.

Across the street in the other direction was New York New York. It's every bit as gaudy and over-the-top as a Las Vegas casino can get, but very well done. The architectural effort that went into recreating the New York skyline is impressive. The Statue of Liberty replica is so good that it tricked the U.S. Postal Service into issuing a commemorative stamp picturing it rather than the real one in New York. There's even a Statue of Liberty made out of jellybeans inside.

Paris Casino was another example of well-done architecture. The fake Eiffel Tower at night is quite pretty. It's almost subdued when compared to the rest of the strip. The giant Montgolfier balloon with the flashing Barry Manilow billboard on the other side of the tower? Not so much.

You'll notice there are very few people in my photos. That's because there aren't that many people out and about in Las Vegas at 1 a.m. on a Thursday morning. The Wife and Monkey Girl went out and did some Las Vegas street photography earlier in the evening, and once they got back and we managed to get the kids settled, it was pretty late. Considering the photographic bust the Grand Canyon and Horseshoe Bend turned out to be, I was determined to get something in Las Vegas. So I grabbed the 50D (my infrared camera was pretty useless at night), my EF-S 10-22 ultrawide angle and a tripod and set out to get some long-exposure shots of the Las Vegas strip. I ended up walking far more than I'd intended, and was dog tired by the time I got back to the room. I'm disappointed I didn't get any shots of the now-closed Sahara before it's demolished, but you can't have everything. The important thing is that I spent two days in Las Vegas and came close to having a good time (mainly by avoiding all the stuff most people actually go to Las Vegas for), which is more than I can say about my two previous visits to the city. Ironic that Las Vegas, the stop on our road trip I was dreading most, turned out to be the least stressful two days of the entire vacation.

A full gallery of road trip photos can be found here.
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 1
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 2
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 3
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 4
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 5
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 6
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 7
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 8

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Chicken Ranch Central

Another photo shoot

The Wife has gotten so good with her photography skills--she attends conferences and learning seminars with nationally-prominent photographers on a regular basis--that I can often feel like dead weight on her career. I am supposed to be her second shooter/backup for Lisa on Location, but it's no great desire of mine to be a great talent drop-off when called upon to shoot. So every so often I manage to squeeze in a shooting session, to keep those photography muscles lubricated and the mind sharp. It also has the added benefit of giving me a break from all the Chicken Ranch work I'm doing, which (believe it or not) can get pretty onerous.

In any event, I met up with Taylor Bentley Monday evening for a night shoot in San Marcos. She'd been known for her long, flowing blonde hair, but had gotten it cut some months back. We wanted to do a shoot to capture that different look, and the idea of a 1920s flapper came to mind. Well, life intervenes, and we didn't get to shoot as soon as we'd have liked, and her hair isn't quite so short anymore. But we managed to get some fun shots anyway.



We did a night shoot for a couple of reasons. First, evenings were the only times either of us could ever find any free time, but secondly, I've been playing with off-camera lighting and shooting at night gave me the opportunity to take more control over the visual look of the piece. Plus, a night shoot lent itself to establishing more of a glamorous, roaring 20s speakeasy type of mood. A 1928 Hudson or Desoto sedan would've served as the perfect set piece, but alas, on a shoestring budget you can't always swing luxuries like that. I was doing good to get the martini glass.



I didn't have as many keeper shots as I'd have hoped. Focusing in low-light conditions is problematic, and I'm not quite comfortable enough in these kinds of shoots to effectively direct the model and manage consistently good composition. That comes with practice. But overall, I'm happy with some of the shots that I did get, and hopefully, Taylor is as well.

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Night shoot

I had a night shoot with the model Violet Grave tonight. She's done a bunch of goth work, and wanted something more glam for her portfolio. I've been following Dustin Diaz's photo blog, and wanted to try some nighttime strobist-style shots. Violet and I got together right after sundown, along with her son, and trouped about New Braunfels looking for the perfect shots. It's late, and I'm tired, but I think we got at least a few keepers. Here's the last shot we got right before the rains chased us indoors.



Maybe I'll get the hang of this photography thing yet.

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Night shoot

Even though I've been doing a lot of photography work lately as a poorly-paid assistant to The Wife, I haven't actually done any photography for my own amusement in quite some time. That includes work with models or infrared, which is unusual. My work on the Chicken Ranch book, and the Turkey City workshop story took up a lot of time and energy, yes, but shooting the Strutters reunion for Texas State and various wedding events are more to blame, I believe. In light of that, and The Wife's upcoming photoshoots where I'll be a busy assistant but doing little in the way of actual image capture myself, I set about to schedule myself a photo session with an actual, living, breathing model to whom I am unrelated. You know, to shake the rust off and try something new.

To my delight, I was able to book a shoot for next week in Austin with a talented newcomer who, in the space of just one month, has become very much in demand among central Texas glamour photographers. We're going to do an urban night shoot, using the state Capitol building and 6th Street as our backdrops. She has nothing like this in her portfolio, and jumped at the opportunity. The only problem was that I'd never done anything like this, either. And with lighting being one of my weaker areas as far as photography is concerned, well, that's a recipe for disaster.

Enter Dustin Diaz, aka "Lifesaver." Mr. Diaz is a photographer, and a darn fine one at that. What makes him special in this particular context is that he has undertaken one of those 365 challenges, in which he attempts to take a photo every day or the year. Specifically, he's undertaken this challenge as a theme, using off-camera strobe lights in a variety of creative ways (such small flash setups being commonly referred to as "Strobist"), blogging about it, AND POSTING EACH LIGHTING SETUP along with camera and flash settings for each photo. WOW! Now that's what I call dedication. I also call it extremely useful, because although he uses Nikon and I Canon, I've been able to discern enough information to give me a general idea of how to approach this looming night shoot.

But as book smart and street smart are two different things, I knew I'd be a fool to go into the shoot with no practical experience, so last night, after dropping Monkey Girl off at dance practice, I scooted over to downtown New Braunfels for a few proof-of-concept shots. It was too windy to use an umbrella reflector, unfortunately, so I went with a bare flash instead, which gives a harsher light. Using myself as a model was a challenge with focus and setup of the shots, obviously, and the aesthetics weren't too inspiring, either. But I persevered, and came away with several dozen shots that were well-composed with acceptable lighting. I even got confident enough to try a few little tricks, such as using a star filter for a few shots. Here's one of the more interesting results:



I'm pretty confident at this point that I can take some moderately competent single-light night glamour shots, so the shoot won't be for naught. I could do more with multiple strobes--gelling the light for different colors would be very cool--but alas, I'm not capable of that level of creativity yet. Still, I pull this off, I'll have increased my competence as a photographer by one more notch. That's not bad at all.

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