Julius Schulman wrote a great book on photographing architecture. check it out.

my favorite is the call girl cards. just is the most visually interesting. the stained glass isn't bad either and could be a bettered through cropping properly.

for the night shots you need to set your camera on a steady surface or use a tripod to steady the shots. the camera is automatically use a longer exposure. (unless blurry streaks is what you're going for). easiest thing is to set it on timer hit the button and rest it on a surface.

maybe you could spice it up a bit wrt composition through framing, focus and depth of field. some of the photos seem flat or the composition tends to equalize the importance elements in the photo.

i think being conscious of the light you're shooting in will help too. seems like sometimes your objects aren't being exposed properly and you get a wash of muted tones.

looking more i like the table shot w/ the ashtray and mustard. a little photoshop could make that really interesting.

thank you acfa.

all of the blurry (and over exposed to a certain extent) shots were intentional. often i would take two or three: one trying to keep the camera stationary and a second with a slower shutter speed and so on. i found a lot of the blurry ones to be more interesting because of the movement, whether others find it distracting or annoying is one reason for this post.

as i culled through the pictures i took on the trip (almost 1000) i was getting a little bored with the blurry and motion shots (though i thought them incredibly fun to take) what i became more drawn to were the ones like the table/ashtry shot, hotel room: in other words, the "slower" pictures. for me they were the photos taken when i personally was slowed down (eating or relaxing in my room) the antithesis of the blvd and casino images. i also love that yellowish light that you see in the hallway pictures and room shots. they are almost depressing and drab (very much in tune with the decor of the place, imo)

framing, focus, depth of field, color etc are all elements i am trying to improve on. because i may have a personal attachment to the images i capture, i find it hard to critically evaluate them.

again thank you for the insight!

I won't 'critique' your photos because I don't think it's necessary. I do have two recommendations though that really helped me with photographic composition.

First, take a photo class. They're usually cheap, run by guys who've been working with film their whole life, teach you a lot about the 'basic' workings of capturing light, framing, saturation, color, focal length, etc., and can be a fun way to learn.

Second, if you can, take a scenic/cinematic lighting design course. Not only are you learning how to analyze and design with a broad range of real and artificial light sources, you also learn how that light can convey and even evoke a particular meaning, or mood. And all that works very well with photography.

thanks driftwood, since CAA doesn't actually have classes, i might look into sitting in on the photography crits. otherwise i'll have to wait awhile before i can consider putting myself more into debt.