Art Retreat II - Las Vegas

At the moment, I am between dogs. With my released responsibly and decided to travel. Lacking the ability to turn off my camera, my travels quickly turned into elaborate art retreats. As seen in my previous post, my trip to France left me with a feeling of joi de vivre, (as well as leaving me with a slew of throw-away phrases). I’ve shared my images from visiting the City of Romance, now I’m ready to share my images from…the City of Sin, VEGAS.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t very sinful, but there will be many opportunities in the future to make up for my innocence. My absence of immorality didn’t come from a lack of trying; I was up early and to bed late. I was with five other photographer friends for two days and two nights. Our early mornings and late nights were spent together feeding off each other's inspiration to create our own work. But in the day, we would shoot separately; apparently we only like to see each other in dimmer lighting.

Self-Portraits and Plots of World Destruction

I am a terrorist, didn’t you know? Neither did I, but that is what I was told every time I attempted to take a self-portrait on my trip. I am pretty sure it was my thrift store sweater and vintage suitcase, standing in front of my non-aerodynamic equipment and laughing with my friends that tipped those high-detecting sleuths off.  Kudos to you, security guards of Las Vegas, you prevented a series of photographs to be taken that clearly had malicious intentions of annihilation. 

I managed to get one shot before they discovered my underlying plot of cruel purpose.

Two Models, a Hot Dog Bun, and avoiding the Terrorist Task Force
A photographer needs something to photograph, and models need their pictures to be taken. It’s pretty wonderful how that works out sometimes.

DAVID
To avoid clashing with the authority, I had David meet me out on an empty lot of dirt. David has a great spirit, is handsome, and really easy to photograph.   I asked him to bring jeans, a white t-shirt, Converse shoes and hot dog buns. Insert joke here about hot dog buns :)

JESS 
Jess brought charisma and youth. She was wearing super high heels, a short skirt, long thick fabulous hair, a big smile, and a fun attitude.
We roamed around downtown like vagabonds in search of a perfect spot. I thought being a faux terrorist was bad, but when running around with an attractive 20 year-old, you seem to gain even more unwanted attention. I am usually not chaotic when it comes to my shoots. When I am on the JOB I get permits, rent space, and go through all the boring proper procedures. However this time, I said in my 'art - retreat' voice, “fuck it, let’s just grab these shots and then run like hell.” This is what we did and I couldn’t have had a better model to work with. 
Sure we got chased out of every spot by security guards wearing tight starch shirts over bustling bellies. But we had fun, and as I was the first female photographer she had ever worked with, I am pretty confident I set a pretty unique standard.