Photographs from the Pacific Southwest.

I’ve updated the Las Vegas and Los Angeles galleries with new pictures.

The renowned architect Frank Loyd Wright once said “Tip the world on its side, and everything loose will land in Los Angeles”. LA is a city of dreams, stars, and freeways. It can be a surreal place to visit, partly because even if it’s your first time in the City of Angels, you feel a nostalgia for the city.  These sights,  you’ve seen before countless times on television. This feeling of bright warm sunshine, the palm tree lined streets, the Hollywood sign in the background – it feels so familiar. Los Angeles is certainly one of the most culturally influential cities of the world. Hollywood has become synonymous with the movie industry as well as celebrity culture, but it’s also a city of creativity and new ideas – the motion picture industry that took hold here was more of a consequence of this creative ideology than the precursor to it. The scale of America’s second largest city is too daunting to take in, but scaled down to it’s famous neighborhoods, beaches, and landmarks you’ll find LA’s true identity.

Four hours east, in the middle of an inhospitable dessert lies the city that seems impossible. A towering billion dollar strip of megahotels, with regal recreations of Paris, New York, and Egypt among others hundreds of miles from any major city. The landscape is martian. You’d imagine a soulless city built by the Mob as one big red light district would be completely unrewarding to a conscientious traveler – but surprisingly, you’d be wrong. There is great people watching, fascinating feats on engineering, and reliably warm weather aside from a short winter. The city conveys a surprising story, of people and money from all over the world arriving in a city of the old west. The unfathomable city, with its often tacky exuberance, is unique in the world. There is nothing like Las Vegas.