Las Vegas revisited

Adam entered the Reflections contest at school this year in the photography category. The theme was simply "Wow!" When we went to Vegas I gave him my old camera and told him to take pictures of things that made him say "Wow!" and then he could decide when he got home which picture he wanted to use. Considering all of the sights in Las Vegas, I was a little perplexed when this is the only thing that elicited an audible "Wow!" from Adam:

When I questioned him, he said that it was "super cool" because it's a sign that has a flashing light sticking out of it. Ummm . . . Adam . . . this is Vegas. EVERYTHING has a flashing light sticking out of it, even some of the people. I guess I can't give him free reign and then question his artistic vision.

After we got home, he decided that the MGM Lion was the direction he wanted to go. This is the picture that he took from under the glass as the lion was chewing on a rawhide chew toy.

Although, in his words, the "Lion was awesome because it was real", it didn't have quite the "Wow! factor that he was looking for. Since they allow digitally altered photos in the contest, I showed him a few basic things in Photoshop and he went to work. Ultimately, he just applied a pre-defined style and then tried to take out the epoxy line in the cracked glass. This is the resulting image that he entered in the contest: He told me that everybody he showed it to at school said "Wow!" when they saw it, and by his estimate it was at least ten people. I wonder if any of them are contest judges. Doubtful. I'm sure that everyone he asked was his age and his gender.

This picture isn't really suitable for the theme, it did get a chuckle from me when I saw it. There was a racing quad on a trailer with a fern next to the trailer tongue. Instead of taking a picture of the quad, Adam focused on the fern. Funny kid.As I was looking at these, I realized that I never posted any of my favorite Las Vegas pictures. Here are just a few:

Dinner at Rainforest Cafe - Noah insisted on eating the lemon, although it clearly didn't agree with his taste buds. This was after his third bite, all with the same reaction. He kept sucking on it though.

Phil is going to kill me for this one, but I couldn't resist. They were both crossing their eyes - or so they thought.

At the pool. As tends to be his pattern, Noah found some strangers to hang out with.

More shots from the pool.

Handsome boys!