One Stunning Office Building in Summerlin

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A six-story office building at twilight with beige and grey exterior, three glass balconies, with palm trees and desert lanscaping in the foreground with rich blue skies and the Las Vegas Strip in the background.

4:30AM must qualify as one of the most horrible and unpopular hours of the day. Great things don’t happen at 4:30. Even for a town like Las Vegas, by 4:30 most of the fun has already happened, and for anyone else awake at that hour, it either means you have a new baby or you have a cruel employer. But on occasion, a very early hour lends itself to some great photos.

VCC, the contractor tasked with building the Two Summerlin office building in Downtown Summerlin, just across from Red Rock Casino, needed some great portfolio images of the brand-new beautiful  building just completed. Since we wanted to shoot the space at a dramatic twilight hour but dusk put the setting sun directly behind the building creating less-than-flattering light. Consequently, we opted to shoot at dawn, putting us at the site at the aforementioned unsavory hour.

A six-story office building at twilight with beige and grey exterior, with palm trees and desert lanscaping and the top of a parking structure in the foreground with rich blue skies and mountains the background.

What’s more, shooting the building from the ground simply didn’t do justice to the stunning new edifice. From the adjacent parking garage, one is too close to shoot the full building–even with a wide-angle lens. So we enlisted the help of a scissor lift atop the parking structure to allow us to both move back and move up to capture a beautiful perspective of the new tower.

A six-story office building and adjacent three-story parking structure in daytime with streets and landscaping in the foreground.

Start on the third floor of a parking structure and go up another 20 feet in a scissor lift and some great perspectives result.

An office building elevator lobby with shiny tile floors and walls and a green, orange, black, and purple piece of abstract art hanging alongside a stainless steel elevator door.An office building restroom with beige and white tile floor and wall and a beige synthetic countertop with three basins in the foreground and a stainless steel stall door in the background. And elevator interior with shiny silver walls and a grey glass center panel with the words "Two Summerlin" written in white and white LED lighting atop.We also shot the small, but beautiful elevator lobby, the restrooms and the elevator as well, and we thought the photos are certainly worthy of posting.

An off-centered perspective of a six-story office building at twilight with beige and grey exterior, three glass balconies, with palm trees and desert lanscaping in the foreground with rich blue skies and the Las Vegas Strip in the background.

This final shot is a personal favorite; though the building isn’t centered, nor is the whole structure within the frame, it splits the building and distant Vegas lights nicely and distinctly places the tower in its neon-desert environment.

US Bureau of Reclamation

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Workers hoping to get a job on the massive Boulder Dam (now called Hoover Dam) began setting up squatters camps near the chosen work site in 1930. These camps of prospective dam workers might be called the first citizens of Boulder City–a town assembled specifically to house the administration and workforce of the largest public works project in American history. Boulder City was built in a triangular shape and at the peak was the Bureau of Reclamation Administration Building, overlooking the town on one side and the subsequent lake which would be formed by the Dam’s construction. The Administration Building oversaw the successful completion of the Dam and continued to house those overseeing both the operation of the dam and the management of the resources it provided. For nearly ninety years the Administration Building operated without a major renovation–until in 2018 when the Bureau of Reclamation finally completed a full and long overdue restoration of the historic Administration building at 1200 Park in Boulder City.

Upon completion of the restoration, the US Bureau of Reclamation gave us the fantastic opportunity this summer to photograph the building in its fully-restored grandeur. From its iconic exterior to the bathrooms inside, nearly everything was redone, and nearly everything was photographed. Over two days we shot the carefully reconditioned structure both inside and out and delivered over 100 images of the beautiful new environment in which the employees of the Bureau of Reclamation now work. Below are a few samplings of the images we captured in this great project.

While in the previous exterior photo we enhanced the building with some supplemental lighting, we also included some much more natural images in the end bundle. The dramatic skies at dusk here are no sky replacement and all the light is ambient, giving a fairly perfect idea of what the building looks like on a long August night.

The conference room acts as both a normal meeting space, but can also double as a command center in times of crisis. We wanted to capture this particular space both in daytime, with all its natural light and at night to showcase its abundant and modern lighting.

 

In multiple parts of the building the preexisting materials were kept to echo the building’s historic roots. Here we see some exposed brick kept in a Bureau restroom.

On the tastefully restored patio the unique placement of the Administration can be appreciated as one can peer down upon Lake Mead, the child of the Boulder Dam Project, which delivers water and electricity to Las Vegas and numerous western states.

Should I Schedule to Shoot During the Day or at Night?

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A wood-like aluminum backyard bench with its shadow on a light beige tiled patio with cloudy blue skies in the background.We are often asked whether it is better to shoot in the day or at night. While a lot of things factor into that decision (the position of the sun for daytime shots, the amount and role of ambient lighting when shooting at night, the overall look you want, etc) the truth of the matter is that in most cases we can shoot at either time of day and come away with great images.

Longboard Cladding produces exterior siding which a creative metalworker in Vegas turned into a backyard bench–and they wanted showcase this imaginative use of their product in photos. On a tight budget, Longboard dispatched us at our base rate to the home at Ascaya in Henderson in mid day because their thinking was that there is simple more light during the day. While the above photo shows that the few speed lights (you know, the flashes you pop on top of your camera) which we carry on every shoot can go a long way in making a beautiful photograph, when we changed angles, we didn’t have the lighting ammunition to overpower the sun which was blasting directly behind the patio. We did our best with the lights we had and manually bracketed multiple exposures (think HDR), and got an okay result:

A stainless steel built-in backward bbq with wood-like aluminum fencing and bench atop light beige tiled flooring with cloudy bright daylight in the background.

But with a stunning location overlooking the Strip and some obvious recessed lighting built into the patio, we thought the home was a prime candidate for some quick and easy nighttime photos. Especially in wintertime when the sun sets before 4:30PM, getting photos at dusk can be every bit as convenient as shooting during the day. (When the sun sets at 9:00PM, homeowners may be less receptive to a photographer.) Here, our gracious host agreed to let us come back for a few quick shots at twilight and we were able to add some dramatic diversity to Longboard’s portfolio of this project. We hope you like what you see!

A wood-like aluminum backyard bench on a light beige tiled patio with Las Vegas city lights and a pool in the background.A wood-like aluminum backyard bench on a light beige tiled patio with Las Vegas city lights in the background. A stainless steel built-in backward bbq with wood-like aluminum fencing and bench atop light beige tiled flooring and a rich blue twilight sky in the background.