Standard carnival swings. Not much more to say about it, I suppose.

Twice a year or so some organization puts on the San Genarro Feast, a mini festival meant to celebrate Italian culture. Well, far from REALLY celebrating the food and culture of Italy, San Genarro really just allows local vendors to setup booths, cook some food and serve a large collection of people. There wasn’t much of a schedule of events or even entertainers really. Yes, there were plenty of Italian food… pizza, cannolis, sausage, pasta and so on… but there was also southern shrimp, BBQ and vendors selling unrelated crap. But whatever, right? It was fun. And this was the first picture I took that night.

I recently began training to pilot the MQ-9 Reaper, an improved version of the MQ-1B Predator I was flying before. The Reaper’s primary mission is close air support and thus carries a greater load of armaments. Laser-guided bombs and missiles and, in the future, GPS guided weapons. This picture is of my sensor operator Andrew taken one night down on Fremont Street while he and I were hanging out. White balance correction, slight saturation enhancement, cosmetic adjustments and some sharpening.

Bellagio again, this time from another angle. See the building immediately to the left of Bellagio’s main tower? That is a second tower of hotel rooms and offices added to meet demand. I mention it now because, if you look at the previous image I took, it is conspicuously missing. Photoshop magic.

Lauded as one of the nicest hotels in the world, Bellagio opened to much fanfare in 1998 on the corner of Flamingo and Las Vegas Blvd in place of the Dunes which had previously stood in that spot. Featuring some incredible restaurants, salons, water fountains, art exhibits and (I assume) hotel rooms, it still holds its place as one of Vegas’s most extravagant.

While in Sequoia National Park Jennifer and I hiked to Tokopah Falls, the waterfall seen here. It was a pretty easy hike… well-maintained trail and not terribly steep. This picture was taken at the end of the trail from the foot of the falls. I took a number of photos and this one stood out. See that tentacaled head emerging from the water? Cthulhu rising! Apparently he’s not trapped in the South Pacific!