The last time I was in Las Vegas, it was primarily for a half-marathon, but with a focus on dressing up and hanging with my friends. This time round, I was primarily there for a photoshoot. It went ok.

Actually, depending on how you look at it, it went pretty awful.

It got up to 43C/110F, which are temperatures I cannot abide. I tend to thrive around 21C/70F, and subsequently melt into a heap at 30C/86F.

I had a pretty bad cough/cold, and spent a large portion of my time being doped up on almost-certainly too-much-dayquil and figuring out where in god’s name I could get some sorely-needed vitamins.

My phone’s screen had cracked days before, with one crack spidering its way across the front-facing camera, meaning that in certain light-conditions I couldn’t take nice photos.

Technical difficulties – my photo-taking setup suffered some issues halfway through the shoot that meant I had to stop and figure out what was broken. I still really don’t know what happened or why, but SSHing into the raspberry pi, it turned out docker daemon was frozen for some reason, and booting up the container wouldn’t work anymore, so I ended up running everything manually outside of docker I hit it with a hammer and it was fine.

All of that added up to taking fewer photos in fewer outfits than I would’ve liked. I did take a lot though, in a nice, large hotel room, with a giant terrace facing the strip. I’m still not entirely sure why I got it so cheap – possibly some combination of it being mid-week and it being hotter than a bad day in hell. Although I was in town for two nights, I only managed one day of photos.

Day one was reserved for playing Stardew Valley and getting some amount of tanning done by the pool, all deeply interspersed with the inelegant and unladylike expulsion of mucus. Dayquil helped me get through the day; Nyquil failed to get me through the night – I was certainly not the most rested person in the morning.

Day two, however, is when the pictures started to flow. Mostly. I had to take a break halfway through the day, and given all the snot-guzzling/head-aching/heat, I wasn’t feeling particularly brave – certainly not enough to face Vegas’ blistering heat in heavy makeup and a wig – so I de-femmed and ventured to a restaurant at the hotel I was staying in before heading back upstairs to start again with the remainder of the outfits. Even with a full day of taking photos, I didn’t get through all the outfits I’d brought with me. Photoshoots are hard, exhausting, uncomfortable work. Running back and forth trying to set up the shot, and then making adjustments every few photos. Wardrobe changes, makeup adjustments. The heat certainly didn’t help, affecting both my energy level, and my makeup.

Having a room with a terrace was awesome, but taking photos out there took some work, particularly given the temperature. There was a lot of popping in and out of the room with all the gear, and then running off to the bathroom to dab at my face with a powdered brush to try and remove the shine I had acquired from the effort of movement. And the heat. Did I mention the heat? I may have mentioned the heat already.

With all those setbacks, I ended up with a shit-ton of photos, enough that made it sense to split over a number of posts. All in all, I took around six-hundred and fifty photos. After many hours of depressing, self-esteem-crushing evaluation of my appearance, I managed to whittle them down to around a hundred. I’m not going to post them all, that’s absurd. So here’s links to the best ones:

And for the more saucily-inclined, Vegas: Colour Me Bad.

All in all, it was a fun trip. Would I do it again? Probably. I’d just make sure to do it at a cooler time, with less sickness clouding my head.

<3