Arrival in Las Vegas

11 April 201511 April 2015 yannickmartens Leave a comment

After two hours driving from Death Valley, we arrived in Las Vegas.

It was easy to find, because when you are drive towards it,
you can see the light pollution at least an hour before you arrive.

It was completely the opposite from what we experienced in Death Valley.

It has a big city feeling, even when it’s located in the middle of nowhere.
It’s full of life, suddenly a lot of traffic, a lot of noise and so many different types of lighting.

To summarize it, it just looks like an amusement park, but for grownups.

Because we didn’t book a hotel yet, we had to decide where we wanted to stay.

Luckily I asked my friends and colleagues for some hotel tips before we went.
So I had a shortlist of where we should stay.

It was already 23.30 and while we were driving we saw the MGM and it was on the list.
That’s why we decided to check if they still had rooms available.

We thought it would be calm at the check-in at that hour, but apparently we were wrong.
Even at that hour there’s still a line of people, who want to check-in.
But they had at least 8 receptionists checking in people, so didn’t had to wait long.

After 15 minutes it was our turn.
When they showed us all the possibilities, the receptionist gave us a great hint.

She told us to book a standard room online through a third party website
and then she could give us cheap suite upgrades at her desk.

It sounded so weird, because we were standing at the front desk to check-in,
and we were thinking: “Why can’t you fix that for us, here at the desk”.

But we thought why we wouldn’t try it out,
so we walked back to the end of the line and booked a room via a third party website,
like they advised us.

When it was our turn again, we had a new receptionist.

She was telling us, it wasn’t possible anymore, all the rooms were booked.
I was completely shocked!

So I started explaining what happened, I think she was new in the hotel,
because she had to call someone to help her out with the booking system.

When the manager arrived at our desk, I explained him what happened,
and he assured me he would fix it.

And 10 minutes later we got a very cheap upgrade, to a SPA Suite.

It was a nice suite.
With all the comfort you want,
like a bar, a walk in closet, a king size bed, a living area and a HUGE bathroom.

I presume this why they call it the SPA suite.

It was a long day.
So after a few drinks and a little bit of gambling, we went to sleep.

Night shoot Down Town Los Angeles

14 March 201514 March 2015 yannickmartens Leave a comment

We did a night shoot in Down Town Los Angeles.

We did it because it was the last night for Filip Grossard in LA.
During his road trip through California he met some guys, who wanted to show us some good spots in LA to take some nice pictures.
AND INDEED, they knew where to go!!

Here’s the result:

Immediately after work we went to Down Town LA, so we could still see the sunset.

But because of the LA traffic, we couldn’t see much of the sunset anymore.
So we had to take all the pictures at “nightlight”.

Because we had to wait for the friends of Filip to arrive, we searched something to eat.
And like always, we couldn’t decide, so we used Yelp to pick our restaurant.
This was the location Yelp Advised :D.

The food wasn’t bad, but the accommodation itself was a little weird, especially the hyper active waitress.
She was jumping around when we ordered, and used A LOT of hand expressions to explain all the kinds of dishes.

After dinner, we went to the US Bank tower, because we agreed on meeting the other guys there.

Because we had to wait for several hours, we played with our camera settings, took some pictures
had some recaps about some great nights and laughed a lot.

Then the friends of Filip arrived.
Really nice guys and they advised us, to climb onto the roof of the Millennium Biltmore hotel.
Because it was a nice old hotel, it was still possible to use the fire stairs to get onto the roof of the hotel.

The hallway in the millennium biltmore hotel

Reception of the millennium biltmore hotel

Once arrived on the roof, the views were breathtaking!!!
You where still between some other skyscrapers but high in the sky :).

To give you an impression, where we took pictures, I added a photo from Google Earth.

Roof Millennium Biltmore Hotel Los Angeles

Here are some of the pictures, I took on the roof.

Lying down on the rooftop to take pictures

Running and climbing ladders.
Trying not to get caught, on the security camera’s.

On the roof of the millennium biltmore hotel

If we just went to that bar to take some pictures, it would saved us from some crazy stunts.
But still, this was more exiting because it had the feeling of an adventure.
Getting in the hotel, getting to the top floor, take fire stairs, climbs ladders, not get caught on the security camera’s and so on.