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“Why do you take so many pictures of the Stratosphere?”

“Why do you take so many unflattering pictures of Las Vegas?”

In the last few months, I’ve been hit with variations of these two questions on a routine basis.

For some reason, there has been a burgeoning interest in my photographic habits.

Why?  I do not know.  I think some of the questions are rhetorical critiques, but perhaps there is a legitimate question or two buried within the hundred or so queries over the past few months.

The reason I don’t respond to individual emails is because I don’t respond to anything unless I make an effort to put some thought into it.  I’ve never sent an email that says “LOL. Thanks.”  This is why I’m a bad Twitterer.  I’m not brief.  I don’t cut-and-paste responses either.  If I don’t have the time to formulate a thoughtful, complete response, I don’t respond at all.  It is for this reason, I usually address common questions publicly.  I just can’t do it one-by-one.

So, for the first time, I will try to provide at least some insight into my Vegas photography “style”.

When news crews are in Washington, D.C., they often film their reporters standing in front of the White House or the Capitol Building.  This even extends to political cartoons.  They will typically sketch a government landmark somewhere in the backdrop.  This is the primary visual clue to the reader that the setting of the cartoon is in Washington.

When crews are reporting from Los Angeles, they typically have the Hollywood sign visible in the background.  New York reporters will get a Times Square or a Manhattan skyline shot.  Every city has a designated spot where crews congregate to report generic geographically-based stories.  It’s their way of saying “Look, we’re really here!”.

In Las Vegas, that spot is the “Welcome to Las Vegas Sign”.  Every time something happens in Vegas, crews from all over the country trip all over themselves to jockey for location shots in front of the sign.  If there are any weather abnormalities, they go to the sign … if they talk about tourism numbers, they go to the sign … hell, sometimes they go to the sign for no obvious reason at all.  It’s a default location when there is nowhere else to go.

For example, late last week I took a trip to Town Square, and when I was getting ready to pass the “Welcome” sign on the way home, I saw a small convoy of news vans parked in front of it.  Thinking the sign had been vandalized again, or that something else serious had happened, I quickly pulled into the parking lot.  As it turns out, absolutely nothing had happened at the sign.  The President was in town, and the news vans thought it would be swell to have the “Welcome” sign as a backdrop while they talked about Obama.

Gee, which Harvard grad came up with that suggestion?

It was just so … original.

“But I did my thesis on originality!”, said the credentialed genius I just insulted.

Creativity and independent thinking has never been a strong suit for the mainstream media, but I do think it would be admirable if they at least tried to carve out their own spot here in town instead of rushing to the exact same place every time a general Vegas story breaks.

Channel 5 could stand in front of the Rio, Channel 3 in front of Vegas Vic, Channel 8 could report from inside Olympic Garden while Amanda Hernandez works the stripper pole … you get the idea.

My own personal “location shot” is the Strat.

Whenever possible, I try to get the Stratosphere somewhere in my shots.  If not The Stratosphere, then some kind of landmark that people might recognize.

The reason for this is perspective.  When I photograph a random shot of a car, house, or building around town … it doesn’t really mean anything to those who don’t live here.  As far as they are concerned, the picture could have been taken in Kansas or Maine.  Without some indication that the photo was taken in Las Vegas, it loses a certain amount of relational perspective.

Twenty years from now when I’m shitting into a bag hanging from my stomach and taking Viagra just to masturbate, and I flip through photos on my iPad (which will still be the scarlet letter of every limp-dicked moron on the planet), I don’t want the photos I took in Seattle to look like the ones I took in DC, which also happen to look like the ones I took in Vegas.  Without a landmark, there is no perspective.

In Las Vegas, my preferred landmark is The Stratosphere.  This tower is part of what makes my photos my own.  I obsessively photograph the structure for a variety of reasons.

It is a mental comfort blanket.  It’s the first thing I see when I land in Vegas, it’s the first thing I see when I look out the window in the morning, and the last thing I see before I go to bed at night.  It dominates the view from every square foot of my neighborhood.  It’s a gigantic “you live here –>” thumbtack stuck into a life-sized map of the city.  I always know that if I can just get to the Stratosphere, I can get home.  I never need to explain to anyone where I live, or go into convoluted freeway or street directions.  Just take me to that big thing sticking up in 15 miles the distance, and I can take it from there.

The Stratosphere is also ground zero in Las Vegas.  Dead Center.  The city begins at the Strat and radiates out.  Downtown is a mile North, The Strip is a mile South, the freeway and “new” Vegas suburbs are one mile to the west, and the “original” Vegas begins immediately to the east.  Everything South of the Strat is Clark County, and everything North of The Strat is the city.

I can mentally triangulate where I took any given photo in the valley by looking for the Strat, judging its distance, and using the position of the rides as a compass.  If I look at the sky above the Strat, I also have a pretty good idea as to what the neighborhood weather conditions are.  If the tip is obscured by clouds, it’s cold, if the clouds are moving quickly past the tip, it’s windy, if it’s all clear … then it’s a normal Vegas day.

It’s not just visual.  The screams that eminate from the rides at the top all day, every day, have become a neighborhood soundtrack.  Like birds chirping in the rainforest.  If I don’t hear blood curdling screams every three or four minutes, I get nervous.  I look outside to make sure that civilization is still there.  I go to sleep every night listening to “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”.  As ridiculous as it sounds, it’s become quite comforting.  It’s like Homer Simpson’s “Everything’s Okay Alarm” that blares incessantly until there is a fire … at which point it shuts off.

For these reasons, The Stratosphere is the single object that I photograph most in this town.  It’s the building I most like.

As to the “non-glamor” shots that occasionally go up, I don’t think they are any more or less worthy of publication than sweeping vistas from the Foundation Room.

Las Vegas has an almost pathological aversion to reality, but it is not my responsibility to adhere to this unspoken covenant.  Las Vegas pays people $80 Million to perpetuate the myth.  I am not one of those people.

The Vegas I photograph is MY Las Vegas.  They are real things and real scenes I encounter during the course of a normal day.  I don’t stage the shots.  I happen upon them.  This is the truth and this is what’s real.

When I was working in New York, I remember being given a choice of assignments on one particular day.  I could shoot and report the ribbon cutting ceremony of a new rec center opening, replete with the usual cadre of city officials and a major celebrity who provided funding … or I could shoot the NYPD evicting homeless people from a squat near Downtown Brooklyn.  I chose the latter as a female freelancer who got the left-over assignment breathed a sigh of relief.  Even in so called “creative” works, I’ve always had a strong preference for reality over fantasy.

In the last year or so, I have begun eschewing “traditional” shots of Las Vegas.  You know the ones.  The picture postcards.  The artistically framed shot of Caesars Palace, beautiful people doing beautiful things, yet another crisp shot of the Bellagio Fountains dancing in front of the opulent hotel.

Everybody has these shots.  They are not unique anymore, and they do not show people a different perspective on the city.  They show what everyone already thinks we are, and what everyone already expects to see.

For instance, I just went to Google Images and typed in the word “Bellagio Las Vegas”:

Results 1 – 21 of about 561,000 for bellagio las vegas. (0.30 seconds)

That’s right, there are over half a million shots of the hotel … and most of them follow more or less the same theme.  A shot of the front of the exterior with the fountains dancing out front.

At this point in the game, I have no desire to shoot the 561,001st shot.  It’s been done.  Ad-nauseum.

I too, have photographed every property on the Las Vegas Strip.  Over 1 million shots personally.  Probably more than any single individual on the planet.  I’m the only individual I know with photos not only of every casino exterior, but also photos of every casino interior.  Gaming pits, poker rooms, dealers, cocktail waitresses … what I have is pretty complete.

There’s more to the city, though.  Much more.  There are two million people who live in the Valley, and an infinitesimal number of them live in the shiny strip structures.  Las Vegas doesn’t really look like the slick promo pics.  All of our people don’t look like models, and we have at least as much poverty as excess.  I don’t necessarily consider photos of our bums or barbed wire to be insulting or unflattering.  They just are what they are, in the eye of the beholder.

Sure, stock photos of hotel exteriors and people rolling dice with a cute girl on their arm and a huge smile on their face looks nice, but you can find those at any casino website or any “rah-rah we love Las Vegas, beer, and kittens” site.

I seek out shots of scantily-clad women as much (more than?) the next person, and I like the shiny shit too … but in my opinion, the reality of Las Vegas is just as interesting, if not more interesting, than the fantasy.

Last but not least, if you are one of the people who send an email, and did not receive a response, please don’t take it personally.

Imagine me typing this reply 100 separate times.

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