Historic Railroad Tunnel Trail leads to the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead Recreation Area, Nevada.
This is Janine riding the old railroad bed that now makes up the Historic Railroad Tunnel Trail. This is a cool trail, great for biking or walking. It travels through 5 tunnels as is traverses its way above Lake Mead from the Visitor Center Parking lot to the Hoover Dam parking lot – about 7 miles in length if you do the round trip. This railroad was built to assist with the construction of Hoover Dam.
For this photo, I switched to manual mode and exposed for the sunny areas outside the tunnel. Otherwise the camera metering system would have a tough time accounting for the large dark areas.
I was surprised to find a few wildflower in Valley of Fire at the end of such a hot dry summer season. I was thrilled to find a group of wildflowers next to one of the most colorful patches of rock I had seen!
Wave like hill in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.
We spent more time yesterday hiking in the back-country of Valley of Fire. As most of you already know, this is my favorite area in Nevada. This cool hill kind of reminds me of The Wave in Northern Arizona – without the people and permit hassles.
Las Vegas may have fancy shows and great restaurants, and can be a lot of fun, but it still can’t compete with sweet light in a beautiful landscape like Valley of Fire. Throw in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a cool shooting star at the end of the day and you have something that Las Vegas could never top!
Aggregate rock hill, Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.
I found this interesting solid rock aggregate in the sea of red sandstone in the Valley of Fire. It was like the rocks were cemented together – lots of interesting shapes and colors. Too bad the brittlebush wasn’t blooming.
Valley of Fire State Park has been high on my list for exploring after finding this fascinating place a couple of years ago: colorful hills – Valley of Fire. I hope to spend more time out there in the upcoming week.
View of the Hoover Dam from the new bypass Bridge between Nevada and Arizona.
The Hoover Dam bypass bridge, officially named the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tilman Memorial Bridge (after the late Nevada governor and the late Arizona soldier and football player) finally opened to vehicle traffic last week, and to people traffic a on an attached walkway a couple of days later. The walkway does provide a great view of the dam, but isn’t for those with a fear of heights – you are almost 900 feet above the Colorado River! I can’t help but think this structure will be a big attraction for BASE jumpers, bungee cord jumpers and people committing suicide – at this point there really aren’t any obstructions to such pursuits.
We have been watching the construction of this massive bridge for years – it wasn’t uncommon to see workers hanging high above the river on cables doing what appeared to be very dangerous work. The need for this bridge became more acute after 9/11 when truck traffic between Arizona and Nevada was no longer allowed to use the narrow two lane road across the top of the bridge, thus forcing them to take a longer route between the two states. Even without truck traffic, getting across the dam could often take hours because of the flood of tourist who came to see the dam – this bridge was to bypass all that mess.
You might notice the large bath tub ring around the lake behind the dam – Lake Mead. This is a whole different story. About a week ago, Lake Mead hit an all-time low thanks to an ongoing drought. The last time the water level was this low was in 1937 as the lake was actually being created. Since 1999, the lake level has dropped 130 feet! If it drops another 8 feet, emergency measures kick in reducing Nevada’s water supply by 6%. This is significant, as Southern Nevada draws 90% of its water supply from this lake according to a recent article in the Las Vegas Review. If the lake drops another 33 feet, it will begin to drop below some of the intake tubes.
Ironically, after hitting this all time low a week ago, the Las Vegas area has received about an inch and a half of rain. But if things don’t change, it is anticipated that new record lows will be set again by next May with the arrival of hot, dry weather.
Hoover Dam bypass bridge as viewed from the top of Hoover Dam.
This was an image from a crazy lightning storm last night over Las Vegas – the thunder from this strike came quick, and was loud! The lightning was bright, it must have been close!
We almost never have lightning on the Alaska coast and because of this, I had never attempted to photograph it before. So that is why this image is from our campground. I thought I would experiment from camp to see what I got and wow, that is cool! It sounds like there is a good chance for more tonight – if so, I will go to a little more interesting location, maybe somewhere on the Strip or out into the middle of the desert.
For this image I set my ISO at 10o, and then dialed in an aperture small enough to give me a 30 second exposure which ended up being f/11, and then stood there and hit the shutter every 30 seconds. Of course it seemed like most of the good strikes happened between images, that is until this one.
I intend to share a few more photos from our jaunt to the Bay area here on the photo blog, but as you can see we are now in Las Vegas. We will work on some projects here for the next week or so before moving East towards Arizona / Utah.
Janine mountain biking the Flume Trail, Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
This is an awesome running / biking and mountain biking trail – we think it is the most fun we have ever had riding a trail, more fun then even the Slickrock Trail in Moab! I hope to write more about it when I have more time, but for now lets just say it was a blast.
It is an honor to have an image on the cover of Endless Vacation – a large travel magazine based in Mexico, so I thought I would do a little shameless self promotion blog post to share the news.
Las Vegas – this has got to be the polar opposite of photographing brown bears in a remote Alaska camp!
Janine has recently updated our section of Las Vegas photos, and added a completely new section of Las Vegas City Center photos. Considering this brand new 12 billion dollar city within a city even has its own fire station, and is bigger then most cities we have visited, it seems appropriate for it to have its own section.
Take a 12 minute trip down the Las Vegas Strip in 12 seconds, and then enjoy the Downtown laser light show! I’m surprised it only took 12 minutes to drive the length of the strip, that is because it was a cold, winter mid-week evening. By the way, if you have the bandwidth or patience, you can watch it in 1080 HD.
This is my first attempt at putting together a time-lapse video. I actually captured the stills for the strip footage 4 years ago on the same night as this Las Vegas Strip photo. You might notice that the demolished Stardust is still standing and open, and City Center doesn’t yet exist. The downtown laser show was from last fall.
Four years ago – I had a big head start on the recently popularity for time-lapse – unfortunately these files have just been sitting on my computer. I shot a fair amount of Alaska time-lapse footage last summer, and hope to do something with it soon as well. It has been a bit of a steep learning curve – the long list of words like codec, MPEG4, H.264 are like a whole new language to me. I have to thank Phil Colla for getting me headed in the right direction.
For those who are interested in how I captured the images of the strip, you might enjoy this blog post: Las Vegas Strip
Canoe art in the middle of City Center, Las Vegas, Nevada.
I’m trying to imagine the conversation: “You see we are building a very high-end, 11 billion dollar resort in Las Vegas and think your old canoe would look perfect out front.” Do you or your friends have anymore?”
It is a pretty cool statue, but seems more like something you would see in front of a resort in Jackson Hole or Whistler rather then Las Vegas.
Below are two of the new hotels in City Center. The pool belongs to the non-gaming hotel called the Vdara. Across the way is the much larger hotel and casino known as Aria. It is a bit hard to imagine, but on any given night there could be far more people in this one hotel, then living within 100 miles of my Alaska home. But then, that is one of the things that makes where we live so wonderful – and it is a place where you really can use a canoe!
The pool of the Vdara along with the Aria Hotel and Casino, City Center, Las Vegas, Nevada.
Crystals is the new retail center in the heart of City Center. Something tells me this isn’t the place to pick up a new pair of Carharts or Xtratufs! The top view is of City Center from Las Vegas Blvd “The Strip”.
Below is an inside view – the wooden structure is actually a restaurant! A restaurant that I’m sorry I didn’t get the name of and will be extra sorry when I go to keyword!
This tram connects the Bellagio and the Monte Carlo with the hotels, condos and mall that are the City Center, Las Vegas. The buildings in the background makeup a portion of the Aria Hotel and Casino.
We spent the last two nights and one full day on a very quick trip to Las Vegas. I really needed to photograph the brand new City Center. I have an extensive collection of Las Vegas photos, but not having images of the brand new 11 billion dollar City Center was a giant hole. Yeah that’s right 11 billion! So with wildflowers a bit off here, we made the quick drive to Las Vegas.
I had hoped to photograph the City Center last October, but its planned opening was delayed until December, so I walked finding vantage points outside the project in which I could get distant images. Now I was able to photograph the huge 76 acre project from within.
I usually try to pick “quiet” times to photograph Las Vegas. I was once there during a cold, rainy mid week evening in which I had the Strip about as much to myself as possible in a place visited by more then 35 million people a year. Well, visiting during a warm stretch of weather, during Spring Break, St. Patrick’s Day, and right before the biggest gambling sporting event of the year wasn’t actually quiet, but fortunately it worked out.
Silk Road restaurant at the Vdara hotel, City Center, Las Vegas, Nevada.
I’m on an endless search for new and different vantage points for photographing the Las Vegas Strip, in the hope of improving on our Las Vegas photos.
I’m sorry to say that a few days of high winds and some business activity keep me from visiting Valley of the Fire, so to make up for it, tonight we are grabbing the tent and heading into Joshua Tree National Park – should be nice timing with the nearly full moon, warm weather and all. Should be a big change from Las Vegas!
This may not be the greatest photo, but judging from a search on the internet, it seems to be a relatively rare photo. This is an aerial view of the secret government airlines (run by EG & G) that shuttles workers in unmarked planes to places like the Nevada Test Site better known as Area 51. The planes are white with a red strip down each side, with very small, almost unreadable N numbers.
Now that we have moved from Las Vegas to the Palm Springs area today, I feel safe in sharing this here. What? I think I already hear black helicopters moving in – better go!
We found this vantage point last year after making our way through a 3 story mall on the south end of Fremont Street. This year we returned, and found the mall dark and vacant, still physically open. Now I gotta admit, there are a lot of people walking around downtown Las Vegas who I would rather not run into in a dark alley, or a dark mall for that matter, especially while carrying two expensive cameras and tripods (one was for shooting time-lapses).
We got set up and photographed the light show while nervously watching over our shoulders the whole time. Once the show wrapped up, I quickly folded up the tripods and we bolted for the exit with a feeling of relief, when suddenly 3 young guys came around the corner walking right towards us, saying something about cameras. These guys looked like trouble and there was no one else around. I gotta admit my heart began to race a bit as a put my hand in my jacket and readied the bear spray. I smiled and nodded hi, acting as relaxed as possible, and they did the same. Janine and I slipped into the elevator and watched the doors slowly close, breathing a huge sigh of relief as it began to lower us to the relative safety of the crowded street – one with plenty of police presence!
This a a combination of two images exposed 3 stops apart.
The grand opening for the Vdara Hotel and Spa and its 1,495 suites is December 1, 2009. This is one of a number of properties scheduled to open in City Center this upcoming December. I have about worn out my running shoes trying to find vantage points to photograph these properties while they are still under construction – I have tried just about every freeway overpass, parking garage and road within a mile or two in each direction!
I may have spoke (wrote) to soon on the assignment work yesterday. The scope of the work doubled, while the budget shrunk, and so we are now going to pass. Besides a lot of walking and scouting, I am getting a lot of key-wording and captioning done!
Last winter when we were here in Las Vegas, a newspaper article reported that a good portion of the multi-billion dollar City Center project would be open by this October. Well, it is far from open. It is tough to photograph such a project and keep cranes, dump trucks and all the other commotion out of the scene – a telephoto lens comes in handy.
I actually picked up a few days of photography assignment work while we are here in Las Vegas (not for City Center). As a travel photographer, it is always nice to pick up some assignment work while on the road!
This is a larger version of a photo I posted here last winter – I think this has got to be one of the most amazing geological features I have ever stumbled across.
I posting this again as a lead in to say Janine is done updating our main website with photos from our winter travels, and we now have updated sections for Valley of Fire State Park, and Las Vegas.
Well if I’m going to write about my successful photos, it is only fair that I write about my unsuccessful ones as well.
I have plenty of photos that have never, or rarely sell, so why single out this one? For a few reasons: not only was it somewhat expensive to produce, but at the time, I really thought I had a winner. To add insult to injury, I think I may have missed out on even a far bigger marketing opportunity, but more on that later. [click to continue…]
Sorry to disappoint – I don’t have some crazy story about a late night last night!
You see, on June 5th, Warner Bros. is releasing a major motion picture with that name. Like with most movie releases, the actors perform endless promotional interviews telling everyone just how funny the movie is, and how awesome everyone got along during filming. But unlike most motion pictures, this time, the actors will be doing their interviews while sitting in front of a collage of Las Vegas photos, including our above photo of the Las Vegas sign! I think that is pretty cool.
Hopefully it works out better for them then Viva Laughlin!
This photo blog by professional photographer Ron Niebrugge and his wife and business partner Janine will cover all type of issues, opinions and experiences related to outdoor photography. Go here to see some of Ron's Photos.
Well, visiting during a warm stretch of weather, during Spring Break, St. Patrick’s Day, and right before the biggest gambling sporting event of the year wasn’t actually quiet, but fortunately it worked out.
