Do you have any tips for an amateur photographer going to Las Vegas?

I have a Nikon D3100 and I'm taking a short trip to Vegas. Any ideas or tips you can give me? Someone told me to go to the top of parking structures if I want to get aerial shots. What should I keep my shutter speed on? How can I prevent taking touristy pictures? Am I allowed to shoot inside casinos?

Be sure to use a tripod for those night shots requiring a longer exposure time.

Take some shots from up high of the Las Vegas Strip using your camera on that tripod and a slow shutter speed (1/2 to 1 full second) and open your f/stop to around f/2/8 and you'll get the car lights in interesting effects. But, bracket your shots so you can choose the best ones.

Avoid those "touristy pictures" by calling on your own creativity and imagination.

Just set your camera on aperture priority, set your camera on a wall or hold it against a wall to steady it during long exposures. Remember to set your cameras white balance to incandescent so the colour is as close as possible in the final image file.

I would shoot in RAW and then process all of them using Lightroom 3.6.

Casinos do not like people using cameras, period.

The exposures are going to be long enough, so if you want light trails from the traffic below, use a shutter speed of at least 4 seconds. You will need to set your cameras shooting mode to shutter priority. You can also use the zoom of your lens to create some interesting some images. While the camera is being held very still against a wall, move the zoom ring. Take a look at the results on your LCD and make any changes you like and take some more shots

There are lots of things to shoot there, even on the Strip. All my shooting was touristy because that is the stuff that fascinates me, all that neon and glitz is so different from the rustic rural stuff I usually shoot. I have no idea how you could shoot in Las Vegas and not get at least some touristy stuff. Casinos will not allow photography. I'm not a street photographer, but I saw a lot going on that would make for great street images.

The shutter speed will depend on the lighting. There's plenty of illumination at night if you're in the middle of the action. Use a higher ISO if needed to keep your shutter speed up, or use a tripod. A VR lens would help casual Strip shots when walking around. I'd take a tripod to the parking garage, though.

Valley of Fire is not too far away, if you want to shoot some desert.

Get a tripod and be ready to do long exposures at night. It's a city that looks much better at night.