Cityscape
The Strat and the Strip at night, and a building fire that lit up the whole sky.
Strat Tower Over the Las Vegas Night
About
About this collection
Las Vegas after dark is a photographer's playground. The Strat shows up a lot here because it's visible from almost everywhere, and a few of these are from a night when a nearby building fire turned the sky orange.
Camera settings across this collection: Sony a6500 · 31–200 mm · f/4.5–20 · 1/320–168 s · ISO 200–6400
04 · 9 frames
Photographs
Strat Tower Against Amber CloudsStrat Tower Against Amber Clouds 
Strat Pod Under Purple CloudsStrat Pod Under Purple Clouds 
Strat Pod in Peach HazeStrat Pod in Peach Haze 
Sony a6500 · 200mm · f/6.3 · 1/50s · ISO 6400Hose Stream Over the Flames 
Sony a6500 · 200mm · f/6.3 · 1/320s · ISO 5000Fully Engulfed, Smoke Plume Rising 
Sony a6500 · 200mm · f/6.3 · 1/320s · ISO 2000Flames Through Every Window 
Sony a6500 · 125mm · f/6.3 · 1/200s · ISO 6400Ladder Truck at the Blaze 
Sony a6500 · 55mm · f/20 · 168s · ISO 200The Strat Standing Over Las Vegas
Click or tap a photograph to view it large. Arrow keys move between them; Escape closes.
Captions
Notes on the photographs
- 01Strat Tower Over the Las Vegas Night
The Strat is hard to miss from just about anywhere in the valley, and from up high the whole Strip lines up behind it. This was 1/25s at ISO 6400 on the a6500, about as far as I like to push it at night.
- 02Strat Tower Against Amber Clouds
Low clouds were catching all the city light this night and turning the sky behind the Strat a strange amber. I liked how the tower's blue pod and red spire pop against it.
- 03Strat Pod Under Purple Clouds
Zoomed in on the top of the Strat while the clouds rolled through. The blue lattice lights around the pod and that red spire glow really stand out against the purple sky.
- 04Strat Pod in Peach Haze
Same vantage point as my purple-sky frame, but here the haze had gone warm and pink. Small shift in light, totally different mood.
- 05Hose Stream Over the Flames
By the time I took this one the crews had a stream on the fire from above and the flames were finally dying down. The water arc cutting through the smoke is what makes this frame for me. Shot at 200mm from well back.
- 06Fully Engulfed, Smoke Plume Rising
This is the fire at its worst, with the whole building lit from the inside and smoke boiling up over the roofline. 200mm on the a6500 kept me well back from it.
- 07Flames Through Every Window
Same fire at 200mm, a few frames before the big plume shot, with the flames lighting up the building's window grid like a lantern. 1/320s was enough to freeze them.
- 08Ladder Truck at the Blaze
At 125mm this one takes in the whole scene, the ladder truck working the fire on the left and the smoke drifting over the street lights behind. Not a night I'll forget.
- 09The Strat Standing Over Las Vegas
A long exposure of the Strat tower rising above the Las Vegas skyline at night. I left the shutter open for almost three minutes at f/20 to pull in the glow from the city lights below.