I'm glad the neon graveyard is being stupid!

As most of the photographic world knows, the WPPI convention and trade show took place in Vegas about a month ago. This convention is ridiculously big. I think there were 14,500 photographers there in 2010. Yes that's a freakin' lot of photographers. and walking through the crowded trade show we saw everyone from the ultra pretentious wannabe photo rock stars to the cult of personality photographers with their throngs of on hangers, to the average Joe artist/photographer, to the old photo vets seeing what all the new kids are up to. It really is an eclectic mix of people.
Anyway, while we are there, we like to shoot stuff. Normally we do a little walking or driving around photographing things, sort of street photos, nature, etc. This trip we had a great opportunity to photograph a family we have known for a while.
The Slightings got in touch with us last year about photographing the family while we were there. When we talked about where we wanted to shoot we were really wanting to photograph at the Neon Museum. Unfortunately, there was a photographer that photographed there a couple of years ago; and won some awards with the prints. Since then it has been a place that photographers wanted to visit to recreate those images, (and there have been a lot of super crappy remakes). So, the museum; realized that they had a photographic gold mine. They remodeled to make it more accessable for photographers and then tacked on a $200.00 per hour price tag! What? yup? talking about really taking advantage of people. The fee for that almost doubles most photographers session fees.... urgh!
So, I was fairly upset with this and I just don't feel like that is an ethical amount to charge for that......
We talked about other places to go and Brad Slighting had been to a ghost town about an hour outside of town. So we checked it out, on Google Earth of course. (if you don't know me, I dig Google Earth, it has helped me find many locations to shoot)
Anyway, the placed looked super cool! we got out there and asked about photo fees and rules. Well after the lessons on rattlesnakes and 10 ways to die in the desert, and a $10.00 per hour photo fee (that's more like it) we were out taking pictures.
Old trucks, buses, crashed planes, abandoned mines, buildings, gas pumps, things I've never seen before, were all over the place. It was awesome and I can't wait to go back!
The Slightings are the cutest family. Two boys, two girls, suuuuuuuper cute kids! and we only had 1 breakdown!!
We walked around for about an hour and a half taking pix having fun and trying to beat the wind and rain that were wanting to end our session.
Anyway, enjoy the images and if you want to do a session there let us know we will be there next spring!