How to Take Instagram Worthy Photos in a Casino with Friends and Major Moxie

Images Top by Damir Spanic on Unsplash; bottom by Manfred Vogel on Unsplash

Will Instagram Rule Vegas?

Make no mistake. Las Vegas casino owners want their images on Instagram. Notoriously unyielding on rules involving taking photographs in their casinos, the high-end spots may be willing to compromise in 2021.

A prominent brass sign affixed to a brick wall at the Four Queens Resort and Casino reads: “Please feel free to take photos in the Four Queens. We want you to remember your visit.”

Blackjack, craps and roulette tables at The Strat are covered with a fabric that promotes the Strat’s social media handle (@Stratvegas) and hashtag (#STRATselfie).

“We want our guests to have fun playing table games,” said Brian Stanton, the resort’s vice president of table games. “If part of that fun is taking a photo to capture that moment, we welcome it.”

The Four Queens Resort and Casino encourages respectful picture taking.

Casino Images and a Return to Pre-COVID Normality

Vegas remains the global center of tourism's casino universe, but it's hurting badly. As America's COVID reality wrecks havoc on travel, the economy, and Vegas in particular, many casino lovers are turning online.

You've heard that term -- "semblance of normality". People want it, even if it's not Las Vegas perfectly executed, as pictured in photographer Yossi Michaeli's 'The Life Aquatic' fashion shoot for Modern Luxury. His series of glossed-up perfect poses was flashed poolside at Wynn Las Vegas.

Today, people from Monte Carlo to Australia and back to Los Angeles are looking for the Las Vegas experience — even if it’s recreated online. People don’t care; they want a normalized life experience again, and the more uplifting the better.

Las Vegas Strip gaming-related revenue was down 45% from a year ago as of September 2020, cashing in at only $2.72 billion.

So here we are, with millions of people dreaming about Las Vegas in a pre-pandemic way — at a time when America can't even reach agreement on who won the US presidential election in real life. As our lives become increasingly more absurd, people need an escape.

Let me make a few predictions: It's a given that the global appetite for casino and gaming marketing and promotion imagery will get stronger for both city-based casinos Las Vegas style and global online gambling in the coming months.

I embraced this idea before reading Sunday’s How to Pretend You’re in Paris Tonight article in the New York Times. Now I’m totally certain about our virtual futures — so convinced that I will be traveling to my beloved Paris via the Internet over Thanksgiving weekend.

ZOOM Into a New World

As Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations are experienced worldwide via Zoom, online gambling will become even more welcome into homes around the world.

The market for gambling-related imagery has to increase in size, and with more professional people Zooming — led by creative industries — the quality of imagery should increase as well. COVID has changed inside-out the online experiences of hundreds of millions of people. Just ask Dior.

People around the world are hurting financially, and that includes photographers -- people near and dear to my heart. I never take the easy way out of any situation, so I can’t write some 10 point-guide about making $1 million shooting casino photography. It’s not in the poker deck.

Still, there’s a strange convergence around the topic of shooting editorial images in casinos.

Learning the Ropes of Casino Photography

Recently, a young female photographer asked me for help. Did I know anything about taking photographs in casinos, having written about Modern Luxury's Wynn Las Vegas fashion shoot.

The answer was 'no'.

The last time I was in Vegas for a picture-taking event, I was the maid-of-honor at a Bellagio Hotel wedding. After that, I dropped in on a flight from LA to Miami to check out Daniel Libeskind’s CRYSTALS Retail and Entertainment Center, part of the MGM Mirage City Center.

How about the actual hotel casino setting, she asked. Could she photograph models there? Did I know anything about stock photography? Could she make any money with stock photography or was it a labor of love? The need for a new action plan to pay her rent in this shut-down economy was looming large on her worry list.

For somebody who doesn't even know me, that was a lot of questions. Still, I have that Virgo, let-me-straighten out this mess mentality when it comes to taking charge.

Collage Images: Top (l) Photo by Cleyton Ewerton on Unsplash by and top (r) by Colton Kresser on Unsplash; bottom Photo by Charisse Kenion on Unsplash.

Casino Photography: Will Casinos Pay Photographers for Fashion Shoots?

For starters, Ellen von Unwerth figured out how to take photographs in casinos, because she shot Rianne Ten Haken in one for Madame Figaro.

Von Unwerth's images are like night and day, compared to imagery from the Wynn Las Vegas casino section of the website.

The difference between Modern Luxury’s fashion shoot at the Wynn and the hotel’s own photography is startling. Besides lots of no-people images, the few young women gambling at Wynn images look professionally-executed to me, but not with any attitude.

There's no crowd, and it's more likely a quiet morning when the casino is closed. Model releases clearly are executed -- which is why the women are totally recognizable. Are the images Instagram worthy? Not in my playbook.

I've been reading a lot about stock photography lately — nothing to do with Vegas — so I popped into Getty Images, surveying their 22,297 images of buildings, people and events at Wynn Las Vegas. Boring. Up to page 10, not one casino shot. Maybe by page 50, but I'm not going there. Done.

Yes, Getty needs you, casino photographers, but the reality of success may be more complicated.

Privacy Rules

Most people who can afford to stay and gamble at The Venetian, Wynn Las Vegas, The Bellagio, The Cosmopolitan, MGM Grand and more are not interested in sponsoring the careers of young photographers -- or older ones either.

The luxury market set wants their privacy -- and the hotels want them to HAVE their privacy.

Still, I would think that Las Vegas casinos -- and online ones, too -- would be up for fashion shoots, even if they must help you stage the setting. Clearly, casinos haven't invested in as much high-end imagery in their marketing materials, as I expected before this review.

But assume nothing in the world of billionaires -- they exist to help you when their business is down 45% and you have the golden touch in aspirational, editorial photography. Also, you're much cheaper than EVU.

Bring Good-Looking Friends

I know no way for any photographer to produce a fashion story editorial without the help of hotel management -- unless you have glamorous-looking friends who adore you and will sign model releases.

From my limited knowledge of taking photographs in casinos, many rules bend when you are photographing your own party. You could be severely inspired by EVU's shoot, and follow her lead to extend the fun times from casino to making a glam entrance and to an after party in the hotel room.

Use common sense. Don't take the liberties of shooting openly your own party with permission and then turn your lens far and wide in a casino without permission. Security is not stupid.

Get Model Releases

Besides the concern of harassing people or causing an unintended divorce for which you will be sued when pictures appear online, (trust me on that prediction), you have little hope of selling people images to any stock photography website or online gaming/casino websites or to an existing Las Vegas hotel and casino without model releases.

Believe this AOC reality check, because I researched the question in multiple places. You can submit images to a stock photography site, but they may not be accepted. Hence I can’t find people photos of a human casino experience in the first 10 pages of Getty’s Wynn images. Conventions “yes”; gambling “no”.

Woman image by Vlah Dumitru on Unsplash;

Let me repeat. Do not shoot images of people's faces and try to sell them for money. Do not post them for free either. I don't care what anyone says, I am specifically telling you NOT to shoot recognizable images of people in casinos or elsewhere, without obtaining model releases. Am I clear? This warning is dated Nov. 22, 2020.

If you only want Instagram-worthy images or are a poor struggling photographer like the young woman who contacted me, these general rules and hints for getting good snaps seem to apply widely. Most young photographers want to expand their creative vision, in order to stand out in the crowd.

I’m all-in on that kind of entrepreneurial thinking.

Taking Photos in a Casino

1. Know the rules of the hotel and casino. Plan in advance and ask questions. Try to have a contact at the hotel -- a name you could call once you arrive.

Top photographer Ellen Von Unwerth has all the phone numbers she needs to help her out in a jam or hold the door open for her when she breezes into a hotel for a fashion shoot. Ideally, you have one or two real 'contacts', which is better than having to call Ghostbusters if you are in a jam.

2. Do not think you will go ‘undercover’ for long. Most likely, you will be confronted if you start snapping images far and wide in a casino. Yes, smartphones have made detections more difficult, but seriously -- you will probably get busted. Have a plan for what you will say, how you will handle the situation when confronted.

If you were pulled over by a cop for driving 80 mph in a 50 mph zone, what would you say? If you must think hard about an answer, forget trying to take anything but Instagram-worthy shots with family or friends at a casino. Better yet, go to the spa.

3. For the love of the goddesses, do not haul in any kind of professional photography equipment into the hotel or casino without permission. And no video. Everything I've read about video, is that you are likely to incur the wrath of staff trying to film live.

You may be an innocent, inexperienced photographer but casinos are regularly rife with folks looking to make a heist. You may insist that you're only making a documentary about your virgin casino experience, but the staff will assume you are trying to document the casino's security procedures.

Can you pass the 80mph in a 50 mph zone talk-to-the-cop test? Probably not, so no filming without permission in a casino.

4. If you only want shots of slot machines or craps tables, choose them in a remote area. If you are an accomplished photographer, you can add people later with model shots posing into the photograph's structural elements.

Consider this idea strongly. It’s my own and I didn’t read it anywhere. Also, consider collage imagery with a message. As long as you have models, you can enrich an environmental image in your studio away from the casino.

5. I've read instructions that you should turn the flash off, but I won't tell you to do that. If you have not-pro grade photos when you hope to sell them -- what have you actually achieved? I repeat that you should forget words like ‘undercover’ or being ‘surreptitious’

You are not a cop, and unless you have refined your skills in fast-talking, turn on the flash unless the light is really good. Work within the rules of the place, and get outstanding images that have redeeming value.

You need skills to shoot without a flash, and I seriously doubt that as a novice, you will produce good results. Filters could be helpful; every too-dark photos is now transformed into a potential art piece with filters.

6. Remember that 'sneaky' only goes so far in an environment where security is -- by definition -- on full alert. I've lost my camera temporarily twice at European fashion shows and the third time, a gun was drawn on me in what used to be East Germany.

No, Sally, the guard did not speak English.

Las Vegas event image by Andre Benz on Unsplash; casino image by Michal Soukup on Unsplash

A Security Guard Can Legally Escort You Out of a Vegas Casino

In such a confrontational event, do not channel your inner superiority for one nanosecond. You're not a South African casino photographer who knows the ropes.

"Sorry" is one of those words frequently understood around the world and definitely in Las Vegas. "Sorry, sorry, so sorry" is even better. Be contrite but sincere. Being nice will go further than putting on a lot of attitude.

It's not illegal to take photographs in a Las Vegas casino. Casino employees including security have no legal authority to demand that you delete the images or hand over your camera.

Make no mistake though; they are empowered to escort you off the property. If you are being a jerk, feigning indignation each step of the way, you may have to answer a few questions on the way out the door.

Bottom line, never argue with anyone carrying a gun -- in or out of a Vegas casino. You’ve been warned. Good luck with your new casino photography adventure. Let me know how it all turns out. ~ Anne