Fauntastic Four, originally uploaded by Sienar.

Happy New Year from Rome! Be safe and God bless you. See everyone next year!

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I spent 8 day in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada this past week for the yearly UFG Expo. This was my first time in a city that I’ve only seen in movies and photos and it was every bit as amazing and over-the-top as it’s made out to be. This is truly a city that never sleeps and where anything goes. Drinking on the streets is commonplace, the people are beautiful, the lights are bright and the casinos are plentiful.

I spent every bit of my free time taking photos of everything and anything I found interesting. Needless to say, there was so much that called out to me I rarely had my finger off the shutter. I was duel-wielding this time around, traveling with my Canon G10 in my pocket and A Nikon D70 hanging from my shoulder. The final photo count for this trip was 2,837 photos. Granted there were several repeated photos and some that were test shots where I was messing with different camera settings, but the bulk has remained and has been uploaded to flickr for your viewing pleasure.

I spent my time over there with my boss and a couple of his friends. We walked the strip up and down visiting the various hotels & casinos as well as catching the many free shows Vegas has to offer. We also spent a day at the Hoover Dam taking the Dam tour and learning about one of the most incredible and awe inspiring structures humans have ever constructed.

All the photos can be viewed here, an assortment of my favorites are below in no particular order.

Spent the usual week in Sanibel and loved every second of it. The trip is extremely relaxing and satisfying. It’s not everday that we can leave our normal lives to spend a week on a beach somewhere disconnected from the world. I always try my hardest to not answer phone calls and emails, but I ended up doing that on a few occasions. Regardless, the trip was fun, as it always is, and I took plenty of photos. There’s a selection of my favorites on my flickr page and a handful below.

Happy 4th of July!

Went with some friends last weekend and had a great time. We were there for the world premier of Sector 9! We also saw an acoustic performance by The Coffeehouse Gypsies among other bands. Good performances throughout and good company to share drinks with. The photos turned out better than I had hoped. The lights and colors inside the place added a new element to everything and rather than let the camera decide what settings were best, I left the shutter open at least a second for every exposure. Even when I was using flash I turned on the slow-syncro option to capture the background. I found that if I treat the different lights as characters in the frame along with the other subjects I would yield some interesting results.

I think the atmosphere is captured pretty well in the images. None of the images were “Photoshoped” aside from exposure and level adjustments. It’s basically what I was going for to begin with so I can’t complain. I just wish that compact cameras came equipped with a faster lens. The first company to put a 1.5 lens on a compact will make a lot of people happy photographers.

See all the photos here.

Main problem I foresee now is when I have a large amount of photos that I just took and I have to sit through each one color balancing. I’d like to say the resulting image is worth it, but some photos honestly are not worth the time it takes to tweak it. For right now I am extremely happy with the photos this camera is producing. I’ve had it for about 7 months now and it has exceeded all of my expectations but 1. The real test will be this June when I take it to Sanibel. I average about 800 – 1000 photos during the trip so I will leave my final impressions of the camera till after then.

For now, please enjoy some photos in no particular order:

It was fun.
Enjoy your weekend.