Signs, Doors and Windows...and an Old Car

As our trip to Vegas eases into that place where travel memories go when they start to lose their sharpness, I wanted to take a moment to talk about unusual picture opportunities that present themselves along the road.

The car to the left, for example. Remember the blog where I told you about the jolly guys who had the squirting mustard bottle? This car is out front of their restaurant.

Visually, I suppose it's interesting. But it's also a mish-mash of colors and...stuff. So what makes it work as a graphic for me?

I will often look at a picture of someone's creative work and start wondering about them. The creator, I mean. Take another look at the car. Someone went to a whole lot of trouble to make something that would make an impression on the viewer. Who did that? Why go to all that work and trouble?

How about this snowman? (I think it's a snowman...) From the highway it looks pretty charming because it's hanging out of an Airstream trailer. When you get closer, you can see that the elements and passersby haven't been kind.

Up close...it's kinda creepy.

Of course you have to walk off the highway, through a field where any number of snakes and/or scorpions could be lying in wait for the unwary, round little photographer who just has to get closer to his subject. (I picked up about six hair-thin spines of some kind of pointy plant matter in my foot. I am still trying to get the last one out...)

But look at it. We're talking a snowman hanging out of the window of a trailer in the middle of a desert. Yup. It was worth a picture. (I'm not so sure about the pointy things.) There is no reason for the trailer to be there. Who put it there? Why? (I half suspected it was placed there by the snakes and scorpions to trap unwary photographers...but maybe not.) And why did they stick a snowman in the window? Curiouser and curiouser.

Sometimes the fascination comes from a simple doorway. You will find this particular door about halfway between Kingman and Seligman.

The whole area around it has been crammed tight with artifacts, cars, signs, props, gas pumps and cattle skulls.

I had a small photographer's siezure as I very nearly drove by it. It's a place custom designed for photo hounds.

But look at the door. Click on it. Read what cowboys are supposed to do. Read the rest of the information and tell me that it was not created by someone oozing personality, and pouring that personality onto the door.


Sometimes the object of attention can be something that looks really old -- like this old sign for a Chinese restaurant. There was very little Photoshop done to this sign. The sky really was that blue and the sign really is that worn. I was blown away by the signs in The Boneyard because they make me wonder about the many thousands of people who have seen them, walked by them -- been lured in by them.

Signs speak loudly about place in which they have been found as well as the people who live there.

I am turning the corner of the Vegas trip now. My work has been busy and I am already looking forward to the last trip of the year to Houston, San Antonio and New Orleans.

But I've also noticed that each trip -- from Greece to New York City to Vegas -- each one takes on its own sense of being in my mind. Do you find that about your trips? There's a very distinct tattoo or aftertaste each trip leaves on your spirit.

For this last Vegas trip -- which only lasted a week -- I will retain always the memories of going down Route 66 with my favorite person chatting beside me. I'll remember the magic of Fremont Street as one night slid slowly into the early morning of the next. I'll remember the flat out excitement of being in The Boneyard -- and eating real french fries at Mr. D's Diner. I'll remember driving down a two lane highway with the windows down listening to great music with vast desert all around me.

I love travel.

Love it.

My father asked me the other day why I travel so much. There was a slight, unspoken criticism that maybe I spend too much time on "vacation." But I would beg to point out that there is a vast difference between a vacation and travel.

Those who vacation will sleep in, sit by the pool and live their lives measured by the meals they plan to consume. Travel is...being somewhere exciting and seeing something you have never seen before. It's trying to capture that wonderful magical experience with the click of a shutter. It's about getting up very early and staggering back to the hotel with aching feet -- but knowing you have a couple of hundred pictures you can't wait to see and share. For me it's also about experiencing all this with my wife -- and, at that is the sweetest thing of all.

Yup. There's a difference between vacation and travel. What did Patton say? "For those who understand, no explaination is necessary. For those who don't...no explaination is possible."

I suspect they will need to strap my wheelchair into the spaceship in about forty years. But God willing -- I will still be going to places both old and new with Sheree. And if I go -- I will have my camera. And if I have my camera -- Photoshop won't be far away either.

So there.

Surviving the Las Vegas Strip

It's a little before 8:00 in the morning. I can already smell the hot sun on the pavement of Las Vegas. My wife and I are creeping across the street from our rented condo at Granville. We are going to play a little on the Wizard of Oz slot machine. We figure if we go early, we'll get there before the problem gamblers arrive. (You just shush.)

The South Point casino has four of these machines, one right next to the other and last night they were choked with happy, laughing people who were cleaning up with jackpot after jackpot.

My wife is a huge Wizard of Oz fan and she loves slot machines. I love the fact that this is a penny slot machine...so it takes marginally longer to eat your money.

We cross the casino...all senses tingling, fingers teasing the allocated but no-doubt doomed dollars in our pockets. At first I am surprised at how many people are here at such an hour. (You can never tell what time it is in the casino. It could be mid morning. It could be midnight.)

"Boy...there sure are a lot of problem gamblers here this morning," I comment to my wife.

She gets the joke -- but is ignoring me.

"You'd have to be half crazy to be in a casino before breakfast," I add cleverly.

She ignores me some more.

"Holy smokes! You'd have to be--"

She turns to me and fixes me with blue eyes just on the edge of saying something really nasty. I grin and make a lock-box motion with my finger at the edge of my lips, waggling my eyebrows in my very most innocent manner. After fixing me with a "Shut up and I mean it" look, my wife takes my hand and we walk together to the back of the casino where the Wizard of Oz slot machines are.

There are two people sitting there. One is an enormous woman, who barley fits on the stool. Her clothes are sweat-stained and a cigarette smoulders in an ashtray beside her. She is mechanically pushing the "Bet Maximum" button and I realize that this particular penny slot machine is taking her for about three bucks a roll.

Beside her is a man. His chin is on his chest and he is breathing heavily, showing every sign of a someone who is either sleeping deeply or has passed away unnoticed at some point during the night. He wears sweat pants (more to make a fashion statement, than as actual workout gear) and a sweat shirt that may have fit well about fifty pounds ago.

The woman hits a jackpot. The machine has a small siezure. Her expression doesn't change. Not a bit. She keeps pressing the Bet Max button again and again. For reasons I do not fully understand, the whole tableau is starting to depress me.

My wife and I hate the smell of smoke and she wanders off to another game. I, however, am transfixed. It's not unlike watching the same train wreck over and over again.

This woman bets again and again and again and within the space of just a few minutes, she's lost a couple of hundred dollars. All her money has fallen victim to that most reliable staple of Vegas magic: POOOF! It's gone. She pokes the man and wordlessly they rise and shamble off.

I am left thinking of "Undead Casino Zombies" because the way they move makes me remember George Romero's creatures. I start to wonder if the entire purpose of the exercise was to give her money to the slot machine in the first place and now she can finally relax because it's gone.

A girl in a costume that can't be comfortable comes around with a tray full of beer and highballs.

"Cocktails?" she asks no one in particular. "Cocktails?"

It's not even nine o'clock in the morning, I wonder out loud.

This isn't Las Vegas. It's the Island of Lost Boys. It's "para-dice." It's the rabbit hole.

For just a second I feel like an alien dropped into a strange world. All around me slot machines purr and hum and spin. People smoke with a strange meditative manner that tells you they are far, far away and their world has contracted to the few inches of dancing light in front of their eyes. It's still relatively early so there aren't loud hardware salesmen types thumping each other on the back in male bonding rituals at the craps table.

Nope. At this hour it's quiet. It's intense and resigned all at the same time. It's very strange.

Here are some tips for surviving the Strip:

1) Don't go.

2) If Point 1 isn't an option, then ensure you take picture ID with you. On the very off chance you hit a jackpot, you will need ID to get your money. It's actually a Nevada law that you must have ID in casinos. This way, also, if you have a heart attack they will know where to send the body.

3) Try to limit what you are going to bet. My father once told me to take twenty dollars, put it into one pocket and when it's gone -- to walk away. It sounds basic, right? But just think about it for a second. People put more money into the machines because they are expecting a payoff. They expect to get their money back. I remember a college psych class where the prof said "that to do the same thing over and over in the expectation of a different outcome is the purest definition of insanity." You do the math.

4) Yes. The drinks are free. But tip the girl a buck, okay? Maybe you'd like to be trapped in those shoes eight hours a day? And remember: the more you drink, the dumber you get. Do you think it's possible the casinos want it that way? Nah.

5) Taking pictures inside casinos will get you a great deal of immediate attention. I don't know what the issue is -- but security people appear out of nowhere when you start pointing a camera around. This can be highly entertaining if you do it four times in a row at the same casino -- pretending you don't speak english each time. (Okay...maybe I find it entertaining.)

The pictures here were taken at Treasure Island, by the way, on the only day we spent on the Strip. I would have included some of the shots I took of slot machines...but I am pretty sure that I'll get the chair if I actually admit I have them.

Signs of the Times: Vegas Neon

There are some things that video just does better than still photography. I started figuring that out around the midnight hour on Fremont Street in Las Vegas.

That's when they turn on all the vintage signs and since both my wife and myself LOVE these signs, we were looking forward to photographing them.

You are not going to get a better exposure or a tighter crop than the picture on the left. It was an amazing sign. The colors came on in impressive waves and, by prefocussing and judging the time exactly, I was able to hit the shutter button when all the lights were on.

It's still not a very interesting picture, is it?

Neon and flashing lights are about...well...neon and flashing. You can't convey that in a photo. You can just capture that one second and hope that is able to give your viewer a taste of what it was like to be there.

Even when the sign itself is interesting, like "Smoking Good Times" you still won't get a great image. It's like taking a picture of a picture, or someone else's artwork to me.

If we are taking pictures as graphic artists, we need to take pictures that show our subject in a new light, and hopefully convey a sense of that subject. Otherwise it's a picture of a picture, neon or not.


I am told that the name of this neon girl is "Vegas Vicki." She is currently working over a "Gentlemen's Club" in Fremont Street.

As I stood there late in the night, I had a sneaking suspicion that my neon sign graphics weren't going to be all that interesting. So I started taking pictures at odd angles, with strange close-ups.

I wanted to take the neon out of this picture so FIRST I copied the original layer and blured it a little. I wanted to take the harshness of the flat neon lines out. Then I added a blur around the outside of the graphic, since I wanted only her face to be featured.

I copied the original again onto it's own layer and worked adding a brush-stroke texture my graphic. Reducing the Opacity on this layer to about 40% allowed me to have a whisper of that texture come through to make the picture have a "painterly" effect.

Finally -- I flattened the layers and took the whole mess to Virtual Painter's Watercolor filter. I use this plug in all the time and it did a great job on de-neoning the whole graphic.

There's another multi-layered "saloon type neon girl" a little further down Freemont. I looked at this sign for several minutes before I started shooting.

I was trying to see it in a different light.

"What else could she be?" I asked myself.

"She's a superhero," I answered me -- surprising myself with the observation as well as drawing some odd looks from passersby.

So I shot her that way. When I was done, her hand is in the air and she looks like Wonder Woman about to kick someone's butt.

I worked with a Contrast Adjustment Layer to bring the colors down to five or six primary colors. I added a halftoned look and finally took the whole graphic to Alien Skin's Snap Art Comic Book filter. I added a brick wall texture very gently behind the main figure and am very pleased with the final result.

Here are 5 Kick-Butt Tips for Shooting Neon Signs at Night:

1) Brace Your Camera: A tripod is a great idea. But, since I am pretty lazy about what I carry, I have also found fence posts, light standards, garbage cans etc. wonderful places to put my camera down to avoid the dreaded "night shake" syndrome.

2) Use Your Delayed Shutter: This is the setting you use when YOU want to be in the picture. Usually it's a three to ten second delay after you press the shutter button. This allows you to avoid camera shake since the camera is no-doubt-about-it still and stays still after the shutter's pushed.

3) Make Sure You Consider Your Scene Modes or a High ISO: A common problem with night is the...ummm...darkness. So you need to give your camera every break. I'd much rather get an exposure that is a little dark because I can tease the detail out using Photoshop. If the exposure is too light -- that detail's not there.

4) Take LOTS of Pictures From Odd Angles: You never know how you are going to be using the shots. But if you take LOTS of shots you have a very good chance of seeing one you can use for whatever strange and wonderful treatment you have in mind.

5) Study your Subject BEFORE You Start Shooting: What else could it be? Is there one part of the image that would make a great close-up? Could the picture be of something other than what it is? Could a soldier be a superhero? Could a sunset be an atomic explosion?'

How We Wound up Watching Roller Derby on our Anniversary

Let me set the scene: it's our 21st wedding anniversary and Sheree and I have reservations at a great Las Vegas eatery called "The Bootlegger."

We've just finished photographing The Boneyard (I think it's two blogs back), I am recovering nicely from a minor heatstroke and we have decided to poke around Fremont Street.

Fremont is often called "Downtown." It's where Old Vegas is. Downtown was first -- the garish Strip came after. I like downtown. It's got a bunch of old stuff. It's got great signs. It's got a massive video screen on the ceiling that goes for three blocks.

But best of all it has interesting people.

"I want that one," says a girl off to my left. The voice is so loud and hard that I turn to look.

The woman has green and purple hair. She's dressed in black -- and it looks like she is wearing her underwear over top of her clothes. Not quite goth. Something tougher. There are many piercings: her nose, her lip and her eyebrows. I am wondering how she manages metal detectors at the airport and little things like blowing her nose. She wears a brightly colored shirt -- but when she moves I notice that it's not a shirt at all. She's got tattoos running up her arms and across her back. There are Japanese warriors and dragons. There are flowers and dates. There are names -- and it's all woven together in this symphony of color.

She's intent on looking at necklaces and earrings. The clerk is beside himself putting things into bags for her. You can tell he's willing to overlook a strange appearance in favor of a well equipped credit card.

She turns, sees me staring (something that probably isn't real unusual) then she smiles, waves and goes back to her shopping.

I look at Sheree and shrug. She shrugs too and we continue exploring Fremont.

A little further down the way a round little man (who looks a lot like the road manager from "Almost Famous") is painstakingly putting down tape on the cement floor in the direct middle of Fremont Street. He's being helped by another tattooed girl who is wearing a yellow shirt that is about two sizes too small. It is not not a good clothing choice.

"I wonder what they're doing," Sheree says.

I shrug and pretend I am not even remotely interested.

"Why don't you go ask them?" she asks.

I shrug again. Sheree sighs and walks over and talks to them. They are having an animated conversation and all three wind up laughing. She comes back to me and starts walking.

"Well?" I ask.

"Well what?" she says.

"What are they doing?" I ask.

"I thought you didn't care."

"Just curious," I say, unable to come up with a more witty rejoiner.

"It's flat track roller derby. There's a roller derby convention in town," she says. Then she laughs and says "We just keep walking into great stuff! We're going to get great pictures!"

Sheree charms some of the athletes to pose for pictures and before long one of the men, wearing a tutu and a flower in his hair, is mugging for the camera. How does she do it? I watch in wonder. My wife can get pretty much any stranger to do anything. I've seen it a hundred times and I have no idea how she manages. (You should have a look at her blog as well: http://blog.picajet.com/ )

We promptly cancel the Bootlegger and settle in to watch them set up a flat track roller derby. Before long the ladies of roller derby are taking the... ummm ... concrete.

It's a very challenging thing to shoot. We're under a canopy that runs the whole length the main Freemont area. The women move very fast and the only way to get any kind of half decent shot is to use my telephoto with a Continuous Focus sports mode. Even then it's tough to get.

These women are not pampered princesses. They're tougher than some of the bikers we've seen. And they have colorful names. There's Daddy's Girl and Cherry-licious and many more that I can't put here on the off chance children will read this.

But it's fascinating to watch. It smacks a little of WWF or a Monster Truck rally and, as I see them go past, I realize I have only a faint idea of what they are doing. My knowledge of roller derby is limited to watching Raquel Welch in "Kansas City Bomber" years ago...and I didn't understand it then either.

But apparently roller derby works like this: the people skate in circles. They knock against one another and eventually (and understandably) someone falls down. The crowd cheers. Two players wearing panties on their helmets (no...I don't get it either) skate very quickly and do things that make the crowd go "ooo" and "ahhh."

Occasionally a referee blows a whistle and everyone puts their hands on their hips and skates around trying to catch their breath.

How do you communicate this energy in a picture? You need to shoot a LOT of pictures.

Relax: it's digital. What doesn't work, you delete. No harm no foul. Besides -- this was so awfully entertaining to watch. These people were having fun...or as much fun as you can have skating in 100 degree heat in the middle of a sidewalk in Las Vegas.

And Sheree and I had a blast. We traded the formal Bootlegger in on a wonderful tropical buffet and played on slot machines until the wee hours. Then we took a walk around Fremont Street and took some more pictures, sipped a little beer, held hands and were just totally relaxed into enjoying the evening and each other.

So that's how I took my bride of 21 years to roller derby for our anniversary. We had a splendid time.

Am I a class guy or what?

The Best Magician in the World

If you fire a cannon anywhere in Vegas, two things are going to happen. First: casino security guys will be all over you in about three seconds. Second: you will hit about six hundred magicians.

Magic is everywhere here. I don't mean the "Route 66" variety of magic. I mean "guys who do tricks" magic. There are at least 7,524 of the 'Dance around the stage while you do an illusion and try to look just like David Copperfield' variety.

Yawn.

There are 2,647 "pick a card...any card" types.

Double yawn.

Then there's Mac King, who you can see most afternoons at Harrah's casino for about twenty-five bucks. (OR you can go to guest services, get a coupon that lets you in for $9.95 and includes a free drink.)

For the first time I lined up after a show with the rest of the audience to shake a performer's hand. (I hate doing this since I am not a groupie...and groupies do stuff like that..and...well...never mind.) I just wanted to tell him that I very much enjoyed his work.

"Hi," he said.

I nod and remember to smile.

"I really enjoyed your show. I've seen you a number of times. You have wonderful material. Wonderful presentation. Great show."

He smiles and shakes my hand. He says something which I don't hear since I am praying that I didn't just sound like some gushing magic dweeb.

"I'd really like to take your picture," I say.

"Sure. I'll do whatever you want," says King.

I am unable to come up with a witty comment so I raise the camera.

"Take off the lens cap first," he says.

Shit.

I wouldn't be tongue-tied meeting David Copperfield or the Pope. But here's a guy I genuinely respect, a guy who does what I do (comedy magic) and he is the best in the business. Plus he's just a nice guy. I got the picture and declined an offer to have my picture taken with him because that was just a little too groupie-like.

I first saw Mac King when I was just getting into magic. This would be around the early 1990's. I was twelve. (Ahem.) He was at one of the first magic conventions I ever attended in St. Louis and he was precisely in the middle of a long list of acts.

When he came on-stage dressed like a hick in a plaid suit, he had my attention. No black tuxedo? Nary a single sequin? No showy music! No dancing? Not a single appearing cane? No freaking rabbits? This guy oozed different.

And he was funny. Really, really funny. (Producing genuine laughter is a lot tougher than producing a rabbit. Trust me.)

I won't outline his show since I think that's not very cool to do. Suffice it to say that the yellow raincoat thingie is one of the ultimate classics of magic in my books...so is the hand shadow bit which has such a slam-bang surpise finish that the woman beside me spilled her mai tai all over her blouse.

If you find yourself in Vegas one day, avoid the over-priced shows. Take an afternoon to see Mac King, the official winner of the David Thiel Best Magician In The World Award.

On another topic, I heard recently from Sarah in PA. She wondered if this was still a Photoshop blog. As I re-read these past postings, I realize I have said very little about Photoshop, our website (http://www.photoshopbasics.com/) and only a little about photography.

Yup. It's still a Photoshop blog, Sarah. Every pic you see here has been Photoshopped. And I will get back to things like correcting over-exposed images and how to use Adjustment Layers to unmake major "whoops" moments behind the lens.

But I also find travel, the people and the places, seriously fascinating. That's why I blog about them...and I really like to get the details down while they are still fresh in my little mind. So bear with me for just a little while.

Photography captures a moment. We've all heard that. There's a frozen second in every picture. Travel is like that. You get just one second at a time -- and each one either becomes a concrete memory -- or it fades off into oblivion and is lost forever. Think of these little travel vignettes as pictures that flow from my mind to yours. (Okay. That sounds a little gross. Let me put it this way: writing is like a mental snapshot communicated from one human being to another. There. Much better.)

Or you could pop back in a few days when I am done with the whole Vegas trip and am back into Photoshop and Photography.

Just a small word of warning: at the end of this month, Sheree and I are going to Houston, San Antonio and New Orleans. (We're travelling for the first time with another couple.) It's the last trip of the year (also the last trip we can afford *sigh*) and I will very likely have a lot more to share after that.

But thank you for writing! It helps me to know I am not just talking to myself.

Where the Hell is Seligman?

You've heard the expression: "It was 110 degrees in the shade!" Usually those last three words 'in the shade' are delivered with the breathless pronouncement of someone trying to tell a big fat lie with enough passion that they hope it will be believable.

But in Seligman, Arizona (population 456) I checked a thermometer. It was 110 degrees. Said thermometer was In the shade. Honest.

You'll find Seligman a very pleasurable two hour Route 66 drive away from Kingman -- which is about two hours out of Vegas. When you hit this tiny town the first thing you are going to notice is that it is really different. (Okay. The first thing I noticed as we got out of our air-conditioned car was that it was HOT. Sheree and I concluded it was like breathing inside a pizza oven. Small exaggeration. But it was, after all, 110 degrees in the...well y'know.)

Imagine a town created by aging hippie bikers. There's a pronounced "live and let live" feeling. Each of the shops reflects the personality of its owner and I think that's straight up wonderful.

Take the Rusty Bolt for example. This place caters to bikers. Just bikers. And tourists that wish they were bikers. There's leather. There are black Harley tshirts. There are helmets. There's an asthmatic guy in a black leather vest who smells of smoke, but still wears his white hair in a pony tail behind the counter. I started chatting with him.

I was wondering how a business can sustain itself selling biker stuff in a town that is literally in the middle of nowhere on a highway most of the world has forgotten...although I put my question as diplomatically as possible since he is also a really big asthmatic biker guy.

As he wraps up my new Harley tshirt (since I am one of of the "old guys who has always fancied himself a biker on the inside even though he has never learned how to drive one but still thinks 'live to ride' is a really cool slogan even though he's not entirely sure what it means") he turns flat blue eyes on me.

"It's a great ride, man," he growls. That voice that has seen a lot of smoke and a lot of booze.

At this point I suspect that he knows I am not a biker. The big camera around my neck, my New Orleans tshirt and my natty Tilley hat may have given me away. Still I am buying something from him and he's probably decided not to kill me just yet.

Out front of his store is a biker chick. Actually, she's one of those store dummies dressed like a biker chick. When I arrived, there were several bikers out front taking pictures of each other doing socially unacceptable things to her.

I thought she might make for an interesting picture, but the straight-on shots weren't working. I wanted to do something that would make the picture a little skewed. When I took it from above it made for a much more interesting graphic.

There's a restaurant about a block away from the biker place. Here the guys behind the counter have well rehearsed ways of interacting with customers. It's sort of like walking into a modern Marx Brothers movie.

A tourist asked for a straw. The guy behind the counter brings out a handful of real straw. Get it? If you ask for a napkin, they bring up a two options ("New or gently used?" he asks.)

After I placed my order for a cheeseburger and a peanut butter flavored malt (you just shush...) he asked me if I wanted mustard. I said I did and he pointed a mustard bottle at me and a jet of yellow squirted out of it and onto my favorite New Orleans tshirt.

For a second my brain does not comprehend this. Then I get mad. Then I realize that the yellow stuff is actually a yellow string. We both have a good laugh about that. (It is a good thing that I wasn't wearing my biker tshirt. If I had been, he would have been a dead man.)


I don't believe that travel pics always have to be the artsy variety. Don't get me wrong -- I can get as artsy as they next pretend biker in a Harley tshirt. But often something as a documentary shot of something as simple as a door can make a great subject.

Click on the yellow door and have a look at it. (This makes each picture it's original size. Isn't technology grand?) Do you see the two knobs? How about the hundreds of stickers? There's no place for a Rule of Fourths here. It's all just interesting stuff.

I find I can look at this one for a while. When I do, I will remember the heat. I'll remember that a peanut butter malt turns into a milkshake in about eighteen seconds. I will remember an enchanting couple of hours spent in Seligman, AZ -- a place that crackles with personality and that very special Route 66 magic.

Route 66: Pure Travel Magic

As a kid I grew up watching the Route 66 TV show on our crappy black and white television. Each week I planted myself on our light orange carpet, transfixed at the very notion of traveling on one highway spanning the distance between two oceans. The people you could meet! The things you would see! I don’t exaggerate when I say that the very idea of Route 66 left me breathless with an imagination in overdrive, thinking hard about what it would be like to actually travel that road.

On our recent trip to Vegas we did.

I’ll be completely honest: The simple idea of Route 66 still makes a lump form in my throat. There’s an indefinable ‘something’ about a mostly two-lane highway that covers the 2,400 plus miles between Chicago and Los Angeles. It’s a grand notion. I like grand notions. I like that thousands of completely unique businesses sprang up out of nowhere to serve travelers. I like that the highway was called the “Mother Road” during a golden period between 1926 and 1985.

What happened in 1985? That was the year the US government declared Route 66 “redundant” in favor of the soulless but much faster, broader, flatter and straighter superhighways. The Route 66 businesses went bankrupt overnight and today huge stretches of this highway lie unused and are slowly sliding into ruin. It is this picture, more than any other, that causes the aforementioned lump to form in my throat.

You can still travel chunks of this highway. A particularly long stretch is about two hours out of Las Vegas. Start off at the Route 66 museum in Kingman. You’ll get a powerful sense for the passion people feel for Route 66 and its unique place in American history. From there you can ride the highway once dubbed “America’s Main Street” into Arizona or California.

Route 66 still retains its magic. I mean that. Literal magic. It spells out “f-r-e-e-d-o-m” to me, particularly when I hit it with a full tank of gas and my favorite person sitting beside me. You expect to hear the Coasters or Fats Domino or maybe Platters. You simply cannot stop smiling. (Okay. I couldn’t stop smiling.)

Route 66 is to photographers what an “all you can eat buffet” is to a hungry cowboy. There’s something fabulous to photograph around each corner: the vastness of the desert, towns desperately trying to claw their way out of obscurity, restaurants with real character and the kind of food that you didn’t think anyone serves anymore.

What’s behind the charm? As we find ourselves getting older, we look back at what used to be with a fuzzy nostalgic sort of longing. Where are the businesses that smiled at you when you arrived because they were glad to see you…and not because a greeting is mandated in some corporate handbook? Where are real french fries cut from real potatoes and not “reshaped potato paste?” Where is that lighter than air feeling you get when you travel for the joy of the journey and not hunched over the wheel cursing tailgaters and fixating on getting where you’re going as quickly as possible?

Route 66 still has an abundance of magic to share. Here’s a place where people do look back at the past and reassure you that it’s not entirely gone. There are still little pockets of magic left. There’s still a way to ‘get your kicks on Route 66.’

If you go to Vegas and you don’t take a day trip out to Kingman and points beyond, then you will never have any idea what an utterly fabulous travel experience awaits you just two hours off the stinky Strip. And that, friend, would be a tragedy. Go. Take pictures. Talk to the people. Eat the food. Relax into the experience. This is the real stuff. It can’t be synthesized. It can’t be copied. Don’t even try to explain it.

Route 66 is not redundant. Real magic never is.