Warning: The Surgeon General has determined that: This is a very long blogpost. Those of a non-photographic disposition may wish to look away. Actually, those who do like photography may want to do the same. However, as you work your way through it may improve…scouts honour…okay I wasn’t in the scouts, but trust me…I’m a photographer!
My first ever visit to Las Vegas was back in 1995, we stayed Downtown, avoided the Strip and have continued to do so, The Strip is Disney, Downtown is where the Real Vegas lives. I’ve been just about every year since and the odd trip I missed was made up by going twice the following year. I’ve moved around the U.K. a lot, lived in many places and when I list them I often include the five months I called Brighton my home. A rough calculation and there’s the realisation that I’ve lived in Vegas longer than I did Brighton, getting close to six months, albeit not continuously.
We’ve been here before. I’ve written about Vegas previously on this blog and have an ongoing project you can view here. “Nothing new under the sun” is what they say and I’m afraid I don’t agree. Yes, it’s the same background, we’ve discussed this, it’s the people that are important everything else is just scenery. Additionally and crucially it’s our attitude as photographers, how we are currently seeing things, what are we trying to create. Talking of people, here’s Black Batman, we’ll come to him later:
So it is that I walk the same route most days, occassionally wandering in and out of casinos, mostly though pounding familiar streets looking for a shot, a photographic one of course. No different than when I’m in Bath, minus the casinos. So you’re going to see the same scenery repeated, the actors are for the main part endlessly changing, some though appear every day and become almost part of that scenery.
These Vegas trips run like a well oiled machine. I have my routine and pretty much stick to it. However, we know that the more you travel the likelihood of the best laid plans becoming unstuck are ever greater. Here’s a little story for you. Skip it if you wish. My wife thought it was hilarious, because she’s always telling me to get on with things and punctuality is her thing. I had it coming as far as she was concerned:
Our preferred route to Las Vegas having tried Los Angeles, Houston and Direct in the past is as follows; London to Chicago (8hrs 20mins). A layover for a couple of hours; Clear immigration, collect baggage, hand it back over for the connecting flight. Come out of the terminal building, hit the Hilton Hotel (situated in the middle of Chicago O’Hare Terminals), for a few beers and a smoke before catching the Chicago to Las Vegas flight (3hrs 30mins). That beer and smoke in the Hilton is the highlight for me on every trip, sounds strange, but it’s the part I look forward to the most. We will have been up very early, got ourselves to London Heathrow three hours before the flight, it’s a long old day and once at Chicago I always feel that we’ve broken the back of it. Just a short flight and we’ll be there. Not so this year. We were about to head through security at London Heathrow with 45 minutes to spare before pushing off from the gate. Loads of time to get to the gate and board the aircraft. My friend (Kev) was considering another cigarette, but unusually joined me to enter security. In fairness he is what’s described as a heavy smoker and it doesn’t concern me that he may wish to leave it to the absolute last minute to cram in a few more. Here he is, traditionally I take a photo of Kev on our journey home and here it is. Surprisingly for a man who is available in Vegas 22 hours per day (for two hours he sleeps) not in bad shape. Okay, he’s only 27 years old, but nevertheless ;-) …
Back to and now I think of it, this quite boring story: In all these years of travelling together, not just to Vegas, we’ve never missed a flight, been called or held anyone up. Anyway, our boarding passes came up with a big ‘X’ when we scanned them. Back to ticketing where we were told that it was now a deadline of one hour before a flight to clear security. News to us seasoned travellers. They call it ‘Conformance Time’. No notice to say so, nothing printed on the ticket. I argued, not too fiercely, as I knew this lady would be organising what happened next, that we still had plenty of time to make the flight. Nope, she rang through, had our bags removed from the aircraft. Then she re-booked us for a flight leaving two hours later, telling us that if we did it again we’d have to pay for new flights. Ironically we hadn’t paid for seat assignments or any other add ons the airlines seem to love so much, we wouldn’t have had great seats or ones sitting together. My travelling companion suggested that may not be a bad thing, I try not to take it personally! As it happens we were seated together now and in Economy Plus, perhaps I’ll be late going through again. The long day just got longer. We were now flying to New York and connecting there for a Las Vegas flight, a route we’d long avoided, seven hours to New York and a further five hours to Las Vegas. The flight was delayed because of a bird on the runway, when we arrived at New York the Marshal positioned the plane 35 feet off the gate and so we had to sit for half an hour whilst they got a tug to back us out and reposition the aircraft. A quick coffee (no beer to be found) and eventually we boarded the Vegas flight. It’s always choppy coming in to Vegas, something to do with the air I suppose as you fly over mountains before descending to the desert. This time they requested all the cabin crew to strap in 45 minutes before landing due to severe turbulence and told the passengers they were on their own until landed. We’ve had that experience before to, one year the woman in the aisle in front announced before take off that it was her first flight and she was a little anxious! Travel can be a right pain. Never in my wildest dreams with all this swapping around did I expect to see our luggage actually turn up, that’s a miracle in itself, but it did and we arrived safely in ‘Sun’ City, which is all anyone can really ask for. I suggest that now they charge for luggage in the hold on these flights that perhaps a little more effort is made not to loose it. By the way, it was raining!
Let’s return to my routine. For example that opening shot right at the top of this post was taken outside the Plaza Casino, this is where I go every morning to collect my morning coffee and pastry. It’s $2 cheaper than Starbucks which might seem like small change, however it’s a week long campaign whereby control of your money is essential and minimising your losses begins with the morning coffee. Except on this trip it was closed for two days because of a leak in the ceiling at the coffee bar caused by the rain. It was a deluge of biblical proportions at times, on other occasions it slackened off to torrential and I felt right at home. Although I attempted to take some photos my heart wasn’t in it. Grey flat light wasn’t what i wanted from Vegas, nor was it something I was used to. Here’s a couple of days worth of not very great examples. I don’t want to display them particularly, but I’m forced due to my policy of showing on this blog what I saw, sometimes regardless of quality, I apologise for the mediocrity. In the words of Kenny Rogers “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em” and let’s face it I was “all out of Aces” on those two days. That’s what Street Photography is about though, you get what you get. It was grey, damp, chilly and people were indoors. There was hardly a soul about, mostly just me and blowing through town a bit of tumbleweed or was that Kev, difficult to tell sometimes! The last image in this grid was taken as I walked through my hotel reception on the third morning when finally the sun came out to play.
You can see there’s a lot of construction happening Downtown and that’s a good thing. I want it to survive and if they demolish a casino and build a new one then more power to them I say. In this case the Las Vegas Club is no more and a new casino, ‘Circa’, is being built. The place could stagnate otherwise, even though that slightly run down, old Vegas feel is why I want to be there. Back to the Plaza where things have brightened up and the coffee shop is now open.
My routine has a purpose. Firstly it gives me some fresh air and exercise. Secondly I want to take photos more than gamble. Thirdly if I’m out and about I’m not gambling/giving money away. Unlike my friend Kev I keep respectable hours, an attempt is at least made to get 7 hours sleep every night. As they say ‘if you’re snoozing you ain’t loosing’. We tend to do very much our own thing and surprisingly we do bump into each other now and again for a meal together. Maybe not that surprising as he is available 22 hours a day in Vegas as I mentioned earlier, so chances are I’ll see him somewhere. This trip we decided to venture up to the Strip one evening for diner at the Paris. Believe me we’ve done the Strip, seen most of the new places and a lot of the old ones that are no longer a feature. More unusually I took the camera with me for a little night photography. I’m not a fan, but clicked a few. I’m crap at it if I’m being honest and that’s chiefly because I’ve no interest in night photography whatsoever. The fourth image reminds me of a scene from a film where the guy, let’s call him Kev for the sake of argument, hits rock bottom, gets drunk, goes off the rails and we see neon signs of the places he’s fallen in and out of.
So every day I’m out and about, clicking away and it becomes second nature come the end. Your senses sharpen, you see things immediately and constantly. Largely things that wouldn’t interest most people, but for a Street Photographer it’s never ending fascination. Composition, Light, Shadow, Expressions, Gestures, Colours etc.
Take number seven in this grid for example. It’s of no significance, but it caught my eye. How the hell did she happen to walk past with a jumper matching the paint on that van, it isn’t exactly a common colour and I was looking for colours on that morning!
Here’s a few more. As I say some people keep appearing. The guy stood with his drink in the first shot is the same as the Black & White silhouette in the next section. Our friend with his dustpan and brush appears in three images on this post :
I gave a warning at the top of this post that it was a long one. There’s a lot to get through and I really don’t want to do a Part 2. If you’ve lasted this far then well done, actually it’s a fairly quick read if you don’t look at all the photos. There’s some reasonably good Street Photography coming up, then we’ll discuss my new ‘friend’ and I’m going to pick a favourite shot. In the meantime let’s get these out of the way. Yes, I could have put them in one of those grids, but I feel they deserve more space:
It’s endless. Let’s cruise towards the end of this post. Now, I did say we’d discuss Black Batman aka Black Ice. Many dress up on the Strip and Downtown, then they stand around waiting for someone to want a photo with them. I watch them and they get very little custom. This guy knows how to deal with people, he draws them, a showman of sorts. I spoke to him briefly on most days. Here he is on our first encounter…
The following day we tried a portrait session in the sun, a bit forced, not really capturing the character beneath the character that he plays so well. This impromptu photo shoot lasted no more than a minute, which is possibly all that was required.
Here he is at work. I get the feeling that although he obviously has to make a ‘Living in Vegas’ he also enjoys the people. You’d have to if you’re doing this every single day, that’s possibly what makes him good at it, at least compared with some of the competition.
Brilliant salesmanship. He looks for a customer, then draws her to him, offers a fist bump, she told him she had no money, then her friends joined in who did have some money. Those ladies enjoyed it, I think our Batman did and I certainly had a great time capturing it all unfold. Lots of gestures and expressions. Seemed like a nice guy.
Time to wrap it up. I need to show you my favourite shot and it’s one that’s grown on me. There’s no light and shadow play to rely on, it’s just a grabbed snap and yet in intrigues me. I’ve had almost a week to look through them all. I may have missed a few and they’ll no doubt emerge at some point in the future. It may seem an odd choice, but it asks questions. Ones I don’t have the answer to and actually it’s two images the first to show you my initial glance. I want to know; Why is he touching his jacket, did he buy this gear for him? What significance the old guitar has? Are they friends? Why is the older guy dressed impeccably and yet his boots and jeans are covered in mud? Was it some kind of an interview for a job?
This is the thing, you never really know in Vegas. The most normal looking things can turn out to be not normal at all. Nice people turn out to be bad and vice versa. It’s all a giant facade, which you have to accept if you’re going to enjoy being there. It’s totally false and at the same time hugely honest or transparent about its intentions.
The Casinos along with some of the inhabitants want your money and they’ll try all sorts of tricks to get it. You need to keep your feet firmly on the ground to keep hold of your hard earned cash.
Time to fly home. From Living to Leaving Las Vegas. We boarded our 9:00 am flight to Chicago only for the plane to experience technical problems at the gate. After almost an hour we were told by the pilot that if people wanted to get off they could. We did. No explanation, no guidance, no announcements, nothing. By pure chance Kev asked at another nearby Gate where a 11:00 am flight to Chicago was boarding what we should do. “Your bags have been moved and are already on this flight Sir, get onboard” was the reply. We did, but, seriously, an absolute mystery and I said before we are seasoned travellers. At Chicago we hopped on to a later flight than we’d been booked for. Once again a miracle happened and our luggage arrived with us at London Heathrow. About the only ‘Luck’ I had on this trip. See you next time Las Vegas.
As always my sincere thanks go to anyone taking the time to read this blog.
All images can be opened by clicking on the thumbnails and are taken using a Leica M with Summicron 35mm Lens fitted.
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