You frequently hear professional "fine art photographers" say how much they dislike Las Vegas. With its tasteless and synthetic appearance and completely over-the-top imitation architectures, the city must be the worst example of human stupidity and greedy capitalism. The last thing on their mind is to degrade themselves to photograph this soulless place. I have sometimes heard "traveling intellectuals" say it's the worst city they have ever seen. What cities are they comparing with - Historic Rome or artistic Paris? It's silly to compare Las Vegas to any other city. Las Vegas is not an ordinary city - it's a fantasy world where everything is allowed. The game in town is to create the most spectacular hotels, casinos, and architectures money can buy. What's wrong with computer machined stone sculptures and flawless precision casts to replicate the historic monuments of Europe and Egypt?:) OK, back to photography. Since I am just a hobby photographer, I guess I am allowed to have some fun and shoot pictures of the place. The photographic opportunities for capturing spectacular lighting and colors at night are endless. Yes, it's all man-made and artificial, but so what? Photography is all about having fun!

Taking pictures around sunset and sunrise to capture some of the landscape as well as the lights of the city is great. If you take shots after sunset, there is no rush to finish. The environment is man-made and well controlled. Subjects of photographic interest are all around you. The only tricky thing about photographing Las Vegas is exposure. Automatic exposure cannot be used. A hand-held light meter is very difficult to use. The challenge is the wide dynamic range of intensities from the many light sources. Facades of buildings have fairly uniform intensities, but the neon lights are all over the map. Some neon lights are much more intense than others, and large screens with bright flashing ads and movies are the worst offenders of over-exposure. There is only one good answer to ensuring good exposure, the histogram!! Trial and error with manual camera setting until the right exposure is achieved by viewing the histogram. Thanks to digital photography! Sometimes it's not possible to capture all the light within the dynamic range of the camera sensor. A handful of pictures in my set consist of two digitally merged frames. The final image mostly consists of one frame exposed for the overall scene, while selected areas are taken from a second frame exposed for the most intense neon lights. This way the most intense neon lights will not be over exposed and burned out.