Sometimes the best way to get better at photography is to stop trying to make a good photograph.
That was the idea behind my first Photography Side Quest.
I took my Leica Q3 down to Fremont Street in Downtown Las Vegas, grabbed a handful of cheap prism lens filters I found on Temu, and decided to see what would happen.
No particular shot list. No serious project. No attempt to make every frame Instagram-worthy.
Just a camera, some weird filters, and a night wandering around looking for interesting things.
A Night on Fremont Street
I started the evening at Atomic Liquors, where I met up with a few local photographers before heading toward Fremont Street.
Eventually I met up with @vegas_bjorn, and we spent the rest of the night wandering through the neon, talking photography, experimenting with the Q3, and looking for moments worth photographing.
It’s been years since I’ve stopped by Fremont Street Experience so things felt new yet also familiar. The booming sounds were overwhelming as I could hardly hear ourselves talk. Fremont Street is already an overwhelming place to photograph. There are neon signs, performers, tourists, casinos, street characters, and constantly changing light everywhere you look.
Adding prism filters to the mix made things even more unpredictable.
The filters distort and duplicate parts of the frame, creating reflections, flares, and strange visual artifacts. Sometimes the effect worked. Sometimes it was completely ridiculous.
And that was kind of the point.
Photography as a Side Quest
I’ve been thinking about photography as a way of getting myself out of the house and into unfamiliar situations.
It’s easy to get caught up in cameras, lenses, settings, megapixels, film stocks, editing, and whether a photograph is technically “good.”
A side quest is different.
It’s an excuse to experiment.
Maybe I try a strange filter. Maybe I take a camera I’ve never used before. Maybe I photograph somewhere I’ve walked past a hundred times. Maybe I meet up with another photographer and just wander around for a few hours.
There doesn’t necessarily have to be a finished project at the end.
Sometimes the experience is the project.
Was the Leica Q3 + Prism Filter Combination Worth It?
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting the prism filters to suddenly transform my photography.
They didn’t.
But they did force me to look at Fremont Street differently.
Instead of simply looking for interesting subjects, I started looking for combinations of lights, people, reflections, and movement that would interact with the filter.
A few photographs from the night ended up being genuinely interesting. Others were absolute disasters.
That’s part of the fun.
The experiment wasn’t really about proving that a $10 filter could compete with expensive photography gear. It was about giving myself a reason to play.
And sometimes that’s exactly what photography needs.
Watch the Side Quest
I put the whole night together as Photography Side Quest #001: Fremont Street, including the walk through Downtown Las Vegas, the experiments with the prism filters, and some of the photographs I made along the way.
Watch the video on YouTube:
I Took a Leica Q3 to Fremont Street to Try $10 Prism Filters
If you’re into street photography, film cameras, digital cameras, photography experiments, or just wandering around with a camera looking for something interesting, welcome to the side quest.
Side quest complete.
Gear
- Leica Q3
- Cheap prism lens filters
- Downtown Las Vegas / Fremont Street Experience
Photographers
@vegas_bjorn
@bjornburton
@charles.fox.film
@nv.nick_photography
@bigmeeze
@ben.photos
@out_side_everyday
