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“Excuse me, sir, there is no photography in here.”

Aaaah, here we go again.  Honestly, I had no idea that a security guard was behind me.

I turned around to face the rotund woman who could no sooner catch me on foot than see her own pubic hair in the shower, and said “Calling a Blackberry camera ‘photography’ is a little optimistic, don’t you think?”

I received a blank stare.  My words had purchased a first-class ticket to the other side of the guard’s head, and the pilot had requested a high altitude.

“There is no photography in here”, she reiterated.

“May I take a photograph of the sign that tells me I can’t take a photograph?”, I asked.

“No you can’t”, she answered.

“Just out of curiosity, do you know why this new policy is in place?”, I asked again.

“National security”, she said.

“Of course”, I responded, and shoved my phone back in my pocket.

Now, three years ago, I might have been annoyed that I was not able to get the shot, but this is no longer the case.

I don’t know if it has been evident, but lately I have cut down on photographs from inside of casinos, and there are a few reasons for this.

First, as an individual, I’m pretty sure that I have the largest archive of casino interior photos of anyone on the planet.  I mean that literally.  There is not a major tourist casino in Las Vegas of which I do not have copious amounts of photographs of the casino floor.

It took me a very large amount of time (over a decade) and effort to get these photos, and in that time, the interiors just have not changed that much.  As such, continuing to stop and take photos indoors has begun providing diminishing returns.  Casino floors pretty much look like casinos from the time they are built until the day they are imploded.

The second reason I have cut back on the shots is motivation.

When the Review Journal or Las Vegas Sun wants to take a photograph in a casino, they call up public relations and someone at the property accomodates them.  At that point, you, the reader, get a staged shot of the best-case-scenario and an article written by someone who probably didn’t spend much time hanging out in the casino with the “common” folks, and this is of marginal relatability.

I’m not saying that this type of photojournalism does not have its place.  The photo is usually of very high-quality, and the writer will have conversational access to someone higher up the food chain than Bruno the Pit Boss.

As the world’s greatest 30% accurate blogger, I don’t do this.  In order to preserve the organic, candid nature of my photos and to provide a “real-world” account of what goes on inside of our casinos when you aren’t one of the city’s elite, my shots are usually guerilla photos.

There is a common misconception that I get paid for photographs, but the fact is, I get exactly nothing for them.  To the contrary, every one of them costs me, either in time, equipment, or bandwidth.  Nobody has ever paid me to take live photos and send them up on the spot.  Some people won’t do anything unless they get paid for it, but I have been operating my personal blog at a whopping loss for several years, and people often underestimate the effort that goes into it.

For instance, a few years ago, there was a story making the rounds about Lake Las Vegas.  I read the press release, typed up my opinion about it, and when I went to include a photo for the post, I realized that I had not personally ever taken a photograph of the lake.  This being the case, I got in my car, and drove two hours round-trip to avoid ripping off a photo from Google Images or the RJ.

I had maybe three readers at the time, and honestly, nobody would have noticed or cared had I just jacked an existing shot from the web.  The shot I came back with was not very good anyway.  Nobody had any idea that I spent two hours for a single shot in a blog post.  I knew, though, and that made all the difference to me.  To this day, when I put 50 photos in a post, they are there simply because of my own motivation to process and post them.  I’ve posted tens of thousands of photos of Las Vegas online, and each one of them has been an outright gift to the Internet community.  A community which, ironically, agrees that … on a good day … I’m 3/10ths as good as a Las Vegas Sun photographer.

Anyway, late last year, I began watermarking my pictures when my photos began appearing on other commercial sites, and in some cases, even in major print.  I was very disheartened when I found some of my images used in tabloid magazines beside stories intended to ruin the lives of others.  At that point, I began visibly, and invisibly watermarking my photographs.  Some people don’t like the watermarks, and some people have come on this very blog to complain about it, and these people can lick my balls.  Given that you don’t pay for them, I can superimpose a pig’s anus over them if I so desire, and I don’t see where you have a legitimate gripe. You still get way more than you pay for.

After a certain period of time, you get to a point where you feel as if some of your efforts are pearls before swine.  Do you really want to risk that extra shot of the dealer’s boobs just so some random guy on the other end of the country can make a shitty comment to you?  Or … after all this time … do you just want to stand there and admire them without risking whatever drama may come your way?

When you first start a band, you’re thrilled to play for free.  Hell, you may even pay the club to let you perform.  After all, being seen is its own reward.  Five years into it, however, the thrill of paying to have bottles thrown at you diminishes. The motivation is just not quite the same.

For about 5 years, I’ve risked harrassment, banishment, and even arrest in some cases to bring a large number of high-risk photos to the public, while dodging bottles and being mercilessly booed by the crowd.  I’ve paid the club to exhibit these every night.  I’ve kind of paved the way for this particular brand of photography, and it’s now time for the “click here to book now” Vegas cheerleaders to risk their ass for their shots.

Sure, I’ll still put my nuts on the line here and there when the mood strikes, but I’ve been carrying the guerilla Vegas photo genre for a long time.  Fuck “search engine optimization”, it’s time for the cub reporters and blogger wannabes to get off their asses, pay their dues, and earn their clicks.

Who am I kidding.  I’ll probably still obsessively work for shots every time I hit the casinos.  Old habits die hard.

The last reason I am trying to pull back from interior casino photography is because I realize that the risks that I am taking, are actually risks to provide free publicity for the people who are trying to stop me from giving them free publicity.

This is insane on my part.

This, I promise you — if I ever own a casino, and you come in to take pictures, I will do three things:

1. I will thank you
2. I will offer to help you get the best photos possible
3. I will beg you to put them online

Why?

Because your photos will be 100% free publicity.  They will cost me absolutely nothing.

Every hundred photos customers take and post on the web will be one less advertisement I will have to buy in a newspaper or magazine.  This will be especially true if the person who takes the photo has an excellent experience in my casino, and they write about it somewhere.

As an individual Vegas “writer”, “blogger” or whatever … I have a reasonably-sized readerbase.  I like to think it’s because I’ve busted my ass for so many years, but maybe people just come to watch the train wreck of my existence.  Whetever the reason, it doesn’t matter.

While not coming even remotely close to the overall readership of newspaper sites or collective blogs, when it comes to individual authors in this town … believe it or not … I’m up there.  I’m not going to go into the specifics of how I know this, nor do I even care if you believe it, but the point is that the accolades I give to a particular business or property is seen by at least a few people.  When I take photos of say, a new party pit, the story carries nearly as far as some of the much more established Vegas “personalities”.

This being the case, it no longer makes sense for me to dive under tables and play cat-and-mouse with security for the grand privilege of giving a casino free publicity.  I know what they get out of it, but I’m not really sure what I get out of it.

If they make it easy for me, great.  They will get the photo posted on a reasonably well-read blog, and I’ll probably hang around long enough to drop some money at the tables and write it up later.  I know for a fact that some of these places have benefitted from my photos.  Far more than I have benefitted from them.

If they make it hard for me, though … fuck em.  Let the ungrateful bastards call up the RJ or the Weekly and ask for their advertising space rates.  It’s no skin off my ass.  There are 200 casinos in this town, and I can go to any of them.  They’re all starting to look and feel the same to me anyway.

When it comes to photography in this town, I have been there, done that, and have paid my dues in spades.  I’ve been detained, threatened, harrassed, and everything in between.

I’ll be 42 years old in a couple of months.  I’ve been in this town a long time.  I’ve seen pretty much all of it, and done pretty much all of it.  The reason I am taking a photo of your new bank of slot machines is because the readers might be interested — I personally don’t give a shit.  It’s a goddamn slot machine.  Get over yourself.

“Fascinating Rex, just F’ing fascinating.  I can’t tell you how long I have been waiting for a dissertation about your photographic bullshit.  Have you a greater point, or was this just another one of your mental masturbations?”

Well, I’m glad you asked, and I appreciate the polite phrasing that you used.  Indeed, I do have a larger point.

Read: Casino Photography: The Empire Strikes Back (Part 2/3) | Casino Photography: Return of the Jedi (Part 3/3)

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