What I love about this thing (and the accompanying software), is that without heavy manipulation – just careful selection of framing, coloring, and contrast, I can make a tree branch look (to me, anyway) like a fantastical alien cliff-side.

Birth of a Cone

In which I am forced to start experimenting with manual focus settings, with results that make me very happy

Apparently, Zorro visits this same park

Heather was alternately excited and apprehensive ever since I signed up for the offer to stay at the Wynn. I don’t think she was worried about succumbing. I think she was worried about the stress and exhaustion of adequately resisting the dangerous extremes making it impossible to enjoy. I can understand that. Saying “no” in Vegas feels so lonely and cold compared to what you imagine as the alternative.

She was working on only three hours’ sleep when we hit the freeway, so the drive passed without much music or conversation; just the occasional check of the football game on the radio as she half-dozed. It being a Sunday, traffic barely dropped below full speed anywhere along the route – which is a secret I’d like to keep from all the poor souls who choke these roads on Fridays seeking escape.

We stopped for lunch in Yermo. The food at Peggy Sue’s 50’s Diner has never been the real reason to stop there. But we rolled through Barstow without feeling peckish, and the organically-swelling kitsch of Peggy Sue’s, with the gift shop, the incomprehensibly-crowded menu, the peg puzzles on every table, and now, a garden in back with metal dinosaur statues, gives a truer road trip experience, which I wanted Heather to have.

”Diner-saurs” and also King Kong

We made our second stop at Primm on the state line – first filling the gas tank, then browsing the state line outlet mall for stylish bargains. I bought my first-ever pair of Hugo Boss jeans, and she bought a man purse at Wilson’s Leather that is going to make a fine bag for daily necessities plus basic supplies for spontaneous art-ing. Not too many female purses suit that specific profile.

The sun was setting as we made our first drive up the Strip towards the Wynn, which sits on the north half beyond Bally’s and Caesar’s and the beautiful budget Vegas holdouts like the Imperial Palace and O’Shea’s. In the parking garage, the warm baritone of casino magnate Steve Wynn rumbles over a loudspeaker, sharing details of the magnificent restaurants within, and his personal excitement at having coaxed Garth Brooks out of retirement to play a few shows.

When you self-park your crappy car, the first thing you see inside the self-park entrance to the casino is the Wynn’s indoor full-service Ferrari dealership. In addition to cars, it sells Ferrari clothing; for people who want a shirt that informs others that they own a Ferrari even when said Ferrari is not in sight.

A casino floor has a way of destroying a human’s ability to walk in a straight line at a steady speed – sort of like those urban legends about how changes in the Earth’s magnetic field could make pigeons go drunky and crash into one another. Between the noise, the thick milling crowd, and the flowery lobby garden that triggered her allergies, Heather was already feeling overwhelmed by the front desk. She sat on a bench as I checked us in.

Of course, as I described in my previous entry, no luxury purchase goes quickly, even when I am trying to hurry things along. Our check-in agent wanted to sell me on some available upgrades to my room, including one that would ONLY be $5 extra a day. She only had ONE of this room left and she would LOVE to put me in it. And that’s how we got placed on a higher floor with a bigger room, but unwittingly traded my view of the Strip for a view of the pool and golf course, which is essentially a blackest black void at night. Ah well – one must always be careful, when entering the world of good taste, not to succumb to the temptation to blow a stack every time something is less than perfect. Besides, our room had these amazing robes: silky on the outside, soft absorbent terrycloth on the inside. Seriously, once we had our luggage dropped, our robes on, and a bath running in the tub with their complimentary bag of bath salts, it didn’t matter how many yahoo douchebags had jostled us on our way.

The agenda for the evening was simply to dine well and then undertake an expedition on the Strip. The wireless Internet was non-functioning. Because I am not classy enough to know whom to call in this situation, I called the concierge, who sounded disappointed in my request. She transferred me to a rep from the hosting company, who advised me that, if I was on a laptop, I should try taking it over by the door of the room, because the signal was weak at my desk. This is comfortably-familiar IT person logic. Sitting on the floor of the entryway, I indeed was able to find access, and thus scout out our dinner menu. The IT person promised to open a “trouble ticket” and attempt to “boost the signal”, which is something he’s probably learned to say in order to mollify angry assholes, as if there’s a special “boost” button he had simply yet to press, like those magic software programs they always have in movies that can “enhance” surveillance photos to 100x detail with a click.

Red 8 is in the Wynn’s “casual dining” category of restaurants, which is code for “still expensive, but we won’t make you wear a tie”. Dinner for two with a dim sum appetizer and one cocktail each came to $90 after tip – definitely beyond my usual definition of “casual dining”. But as a “nice meal” (which I wanted Heather to enjoy at least one of during the stay), it did just fine; my crispy pork belly and craft cocktail were both solidly-yummy and the atmosphere was, within the adjusted hotel level of overall swankiness, stylishly cozy.

Heather tries the swanky life – finds she can enjoy it controlled doses

Bourbon + Thai Tea + Rock Candy Syrup = Good Drinkin’

After dinner, we went searching for a restroom and the mythical “Tower Lobby”, which, the check-in agent had informed me, was an exclusive lobby for “Red Card holders” (like myself, now) that hosted a morning coffee/tea reception among other goodies. This took us through some of the hotel’s convention hallways, which, in most hotels, is where designers opt for the most tortuously bland decor possible. Even here, though, the Wynn cannot help but cram aesthetics politely but deeply into your cramhole.

Seriously, this is just in the hall outside the bathroom

We found the Tower Lobby, at the bottom of a grand staircase right out of Titanic. A couple of extremely-well-dressed people in expensive chairs shifted in alarm at our appearance, and a lobby attendant scurried urgently up to inquire with infinite pleasantness if he could help us with absolutely anything that involved us leaving. He didn’t say the last part out loud, but they never need to. I considered whether to be offended – after all, I was now in my Hugo Boss jeans, which should have acted as camouflage. There must be something else that gives me away – an odor, maybe.

I showed my Red Card and asked about the coffee reception. He said that we were indeed welcome to attend said reception at 7am the next morning – in the seating area at the top of the grand staircase. But, he shared with inifinite sorrow and regret, the area at the BOTTOM of the staircase and beyond was reserved for “Red Card VIPs”’; and I, alas, was not in this extra-rarified category.

This was something I had intuited about the swanky life but which I had rarely experienced so directly, and was a downright revelation for Heather. There is a mad stratification of privilege and envy that happens within the top ranks of prosperity, utterly invisible to everyone outside. No matter how pampered you may be, no matter how many flunkies and artisans are working to surround you with decadence and good taste, someone nearby is always getting more; and what’s more, you can see it. Sure, I had show tickets, a buffet credit, a basket of complimentary top-shelf toiletries delivered daily, turn-down service including chocolates and slippers, and free access to the fitness facilities. But I would have to pay to get into the spa area, which, judging by the brochure, looks like the Titanic’s shipboard Zen Buddhist bathhouse.

Only a few hours into some of the swankiest treatment we’d ever enjoyed on a vacation, we were already being shown how much better we COULD be having it. That’s an insidious thing, and can lead to a life of misery and ridiculous behavior if you let it. The rumor is, that when Donald Trump started building his hotel/condo tower in Las Vegas five years ago, he found out that Wynn’s 60-story tower was the tallest in town, and ordered his built to 65 stories.

Heather and I are in agreement that the design concept Donald Trump demanded for his hotel was “Massive Golden Penis. With pubes.”

End of Part the First
Part the Next: Night and Day on the Vegas Strip

Well, the camera was a $150 Black Friday special at Wal-Mart. Add in anything I’ve spent on a tripod, battery charger, memory cards, and that semi-functional flash diffuser, and my equipment investment still can’t be more than $250. And that’s it for all my picture-taking for nearly four years now. That’s just over $60/year; effectively $5 a month.

$5 a month to have this in my life:
(Click for Samples of Pretty since Ought-7)

Bargain of the frakking century. Practically an insult to the amount of love I have for this hobby that I’ve sunk so LITTLE money into it. That is going to change now, although this is not the moment I buy into a DSLR and start dumping thousands on lenses. I’m upgrading to what is probably the highest-end non-SLR; still compact, still basic, still ready to fire up and shoot if I’m too lazy to compose and adjust, but a big upgrade in all other respects.

From what I can tell, Kodak cameras aren’t really taken seriously by people who take cameras seriously. But I decided to look up old reviews of the model I bought just to see what folks had to say.

Turns out that, at the $150 price point, they were relatively positive. It’s regularly described as a good “second camera”, meaning your first is the El-Cheapo All-Automatic, whereas this one graduates you into the world of limited manual control and better image quality for those who can coax it out. And that’s exactly what it has been for me – that good, second camera that helped me evolve. I think I got a hell of a lot more out of it than most.

All this means I have very high hopes for the new one.

These all come from the famous Botanical Gardens building in Balboa Park, as well as a few from the lagoon outside. It was the last stop of a long and fulfilling day in the park, and all of these pictures were taken in about a 20-minute span just before they closed for the afternoon. I could have spent four times as long in there, with my tripod, and REALLY come back with some quality computer wallpaper. But for doing everything by hand with my aging discount point-and-shoot, I feel good about this batch.

San Diego is California’s city for everyone. The idyllic weather writes the invitation, and then the city itself provides hospitality for guests ranging from the nerds of Comic-Con to the Navy men on the bay. The swells can cavort at the beaches of Coronado, but the grandeur of Balboa Park belongs to the whole grateful public. It is a comfortable metropolis, with full self-knowledge, a friendly spirit, and none of those rivalries that preoccupy its few bigger brothers.

It’s a treasure trove of letters – sometimes fresh, sometimes faded, almost-always splendid. This A-to-Z series actually came about during two separate expeditions into downtown’s Gaslamp District, which explains the emphasis on restaurant signs and vintage hotel logos. Both are in teeming, cosmopolitan abundance there – during my stay I enjoyed Persian cuisine, Italian dessert, and cocktails from Hipsteristan. My general rule is to try and achieve the whole alphabet in one trip, but I was taking my photos while on holiday with a lady; and you don’t keep a lady waiting for dinner when the sun is going down in the Gaslamp.

Once downtown San Diego had an F Street, it was pretty inevitable that a sex shop would open there.

It’s easy to find an “H” in a neighborhood with this many hotels. I wanted to find one that had some seniority.

Sometimes I don’t love a letter but I snag it anyway, just because I don’t have it yet and know I may be pressed for time later. And yet I rather like the way this ended up cropping.

Needed a little something to honor the history and presence of the military in town.

Double W’s!

Unusually, this Z was the first letter I got. The Hotel Cortez, was once the tallest building in San Diego, was right across the street from our Holiday Inn Express, and its lighted sign is a historic landmark.

In the main house hangs a quote from Rachel Carson that I took to heart: “Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.” This nature may be manicured, but at least it’s being celebrated.

Pretty flowers behind the jump.

They were having an indoor competition exhibit for local growers, which meant I finally got to put the tripod to use after lugging it around all day:

But there are a few exceptions, and the first I thought to try was Laguna Beach. This little community of less than 10 square miles and 25,000 souls is a unique blend of posh and personality. Resorts line the cliffs over the sparkling beach, and you can do some of the most expensive patio dining in the county if you choose. But there are also charming single-owner storefronts catering to tastes of the most peculiar specificity, and the town’s historic affection for painters, who helped put the area on the map in the 1920’s, is visible in every direction. Dozens of galleries line Pacific Coast Highway – one has Dali on its walls, while another might have an ocean sunset that was painted last month less than a half-mile away. It’s not as immediate as posting a cell phone picture to Facebook, but something about it feels richer, more intimate.

The hand-made air comes through strongly in this A-Z walk, for which I bent a few rules. Normally I try to avoid taking more than one letter of the same style from the same location, but I wanted to be expedient – it was my first of these walks with company. My platonic brain-mate Lily, a recent transplant to Laguna (and so happily right a resident you’d think they were made for each other), not only acted as tour guide, but helped me keep track of what letters I still needed. The experience worked just as well with good company.

From The Cottage, a landmark local restaurant.

Since my habit is to try my best to isolate the letter from any other letters, we’ll just have to guess who J hearts.

Lily insisted on picking the “L”. How could a gentleman not oblige?

The first of three letters I took from this lovingly-designed deck rail at the end of a greenery-lined path you might miss if you walk by too quickly. This little bit of beauty was a reward for choosing to pursue a tangent.

I like to think that if I was here at sunset, this would glow.

Another cheat – this “O” was right next to the best “T” I got on the walk; but at least their lettering style is distinct from each other.

The brick wall along the path to that deck rail had a few of these amazing old stamped bricks mixed in.

The artist Wyland, famous for his “whaling wall” marine life murals, is a fixture in Laguna, with his own gallery, and his distinctive “W” seemed like it had to be the one for this series.

The last picture of the day, appropriately – from a deli that opened just two weeks ago within pajamas-and-slippers distance of Lily’s apartment. Now she’s discovered a new place for nourishment during study breaks. See what a little active looking can do for you?

The pictures can do most of the talking:


I loved this tissue-paper texture – capturing things like this correctly forces me to become a better photographer

There was a special annual indoor exhibit, too, which gave me a chance to put the ol’ tripod to work.

I try not to use my clumsy and harsh little pop-up flash – but every so often, it really does do the trick.

Turtle yoga

You learn something every day – me, I didn’t know a cactus could be this furry.