Vegas Baby! uhm Travel Photography

Yup, I was in Hawaii for 8 days, now I'm in Vegas for 7. Got here today and didn't get to do much shooting. It's too tempting to just pull the camera out on the strip and start clicking away. Not exactly going to get a lot of keepers like that, so I had to do some research first. :-)



Since I seem to travel to some random places for work fairly regularly, most of my trips are for 2-3 days with lots of work things scheduled. How do I find time for shooting? Well, thankfully, the best times to shoot are way before and way after work. However, how about location scouting? How do I find places to go take some shots without having much time to explore? Here are some of my tricks:

• If there is a local camera shop (Ritz or Wolf don't count), stop by and ask for advice. I've found local staff are all to happy to give an out of towner a tip or two.
• Check Flickr, Panoramio, or Photo.net. On Flickr and Photo.net there are groups with discussion forums where lots of people before you have asked the same questions. Go learn from their mistakes and/or failures. Panoramio's photos are accessible from Google Earth, but that deserves its own bullet.
• Google Earth is perhaps the coolest tool for photographers in unfamiliar territory! The newest version supports showing terrain maps in 3D so you can get a good idea of what you'll see from what locations. Also, it has a sunlight simulator!!! This is an absolutely amazing feature that will show you the intensity of sunlight in certain areas. Are you going to be in a valley? Want to know what areas will get the last bit of sunlight? Google Earth can do that for you. Google Earth also links to Panoramio to pull in travel photos and make them easy to view from Earth's 3D interface. Very cool!
• When you get to a new place, go hunt down a Borders or a Barnes & Noble. Virtually every bookstore I've ever been in has an entire section dedicated to local interest. Within this section you'll usually find several photography books full of great shots of the region. Skim these books, take notes on interesting locations, and go see what you can find. Can you make it better? Did you see the potential for an interesting composition that wasn't in the book. You may go to the same spot, but you can make the shot your own! (Having just gotten to Vegas today, this is how I now know that the roof level of the McCarran Internation Airport short term parking garage has an amazing night view of the strip.)

I hope some of these suggestions are helpful to you. I'm going to go wander around the casino with my camera. (Oh, one last bit of advice, check with local security people in advance if photography is ok, best not to end up in that very big desert out there.)

..mike