Smith Center Engagement Photos

The Smith Center for the Performing Arts sits at 361 Symphony Park Avenue in downtown Las Vegas, across from City Hall, on a 61 acre site the city owns and is still building out. The whole site was a Union Pacific rail yard before that. The Smith Center opened in March 2012, and the design team led by David M. Schwarz Architects took the art deco of Hoover Dam as the reference, which is why the stone, the lanterns and the 17 story bell tower all look like they belong to a much older Las Vegas than the one around them.

For photos, what matters is the block outside the doors. There is a colonnade of pale limestone with art deco lanterns hanging down it. There is a garden walkway between big planters with cafe lights strung across. There is a palm lined plaza, a lawn, and at the east end of the park, an eighty six foot wall of rainbow colored pipes.

I’m McKenzie, and I’ve photographed over 300 weddings in Las Vegas, every year since 2010. Seven different couples are in the gallery on this page, and five of them were in their wedding clothes on the day I shot them. Two were engagement sessions in ordinary clothes. I’m telling you that up front because the walk is the same either way. You get the same colonnade, the same string lights and the same sculpture whether you show up in a gown or in jeans.

Why couples pick Symphony Park for engagement photos

You get four completely different backdrops without moving your car, and they do not look like they came from the same city, let alone the same block.

The colonnade is the one people do not expect. It is a covered stone walkway with square art deco lanterns hanging in a line down it, and the light inside it is soft and warm all afternoon because it is never in direct sun. Every photo in the gallery with those lanterns overhead was taken in the same fifteen feet of walkway.

The garden walkway is the opposite. It is open to the sky, lined with planters and trees, with strings of cafe lights running across between the buildings. In the afternoon it reads as a bright green corridor. In the last half hour of light the strings come on and it turns into something else entirely. Look at how different the same walkway looks in the middle of the gallery versus near the end.

Then there is Pipe Dream, the sculpture at the east end of the park. It is Tim Bavington’s piece, 128 steel pipes painted in bands of color taken from Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, 86 feet across and 27 feet tall. It is a wall of pure color in a city where almost every outdoor backdrop is beige, and it is why a lot of couples ask me about downtown in the first place.

The fourth is the plain one, and it does more work than couples expect: the palm lined plaza and the lawn. Wide, open, symmetrical, with the stone building behind you. It is where the photos of a whole bridal party fit, and it is where I put people at the start of a session while everyone is still warming up.

Almost everybody tells me they are awkward in front of a camera before we start. I am too. You get prompts instead of poses, and about ten minutes in you stop thinking about me at all. Tell me what you’re planning and I’ll walk you through what an hour and a half down here looks like.

What to plan for a Smith Center session

Permission, and who asks for it

This is the part of Symphony Park that people get wrong, so here it is plainly. The Smith Center’s own visitor guidance says photography and videography on its campus is not permitted without prior consent, and it points requests to its press office. That means a session on the campus starts with asking. It is not a place you can treat as a public park just because the walkways are open and nobody stops you.

The park around it is a different matter, because Symphony Park is city land. The City of Las Vegas requires a film permit for commercial filming and still photography inside city limits, which covers a hired photographer working on public ground. The permit itself is free, insurance naming the city is required, and the application goes in at least five working days before the date.

None of that is your job. I make the ask, I file the paperwork, and I plan the route around whatever the answer is. The only thing it needs from you is lead time. Tell me a couple of weeks out rather than a couple of days out and there is nothing to sort out at the last minute.

Parking and how far you walk

You park once and the rest of it is on foot. Everything in the gallery above happened inside about a five minute walk, on flat paving the whole way. There are no stairs you have to take, no gravel, and no dirt. Of every location I shoot in this city, this is the easiest one on shoes and on anybody who does not want to be climbing around.

That flat paving is also the reason bridal parties work here. The photo of five bridesmaids walking the palm path was taken about ninety seconds from where the cars were.

What the buildings do to your light

The stone here is pale and it bounces. On a bright day the colonnade and the walkway between the planters both fill with soft reflected light instead of hard shadow, which is the whole reason I keep bringing couples back. You do not get the harsh squinting look you get out in the open desert at the same hour.

The tradeoff is that the buildings are tall and they cut the light early. By the time the sun is low, half the block is already in shade. That is not a problem, it just means the order matters, and the order is in the section below.

Heat, and the months that are easy

Downtown in July and August is stone and paving with almost no shade over the open parts, and it stays hot well past sunset. Summer sessions here start in the last hour or two of daylight and I do not schedule them any earlier. From about October through April, an afternoon down here is comfortable and we can take our time. The two frames with the yellow trees in the gallery are from November, which is the prettiest this block gets all year.

The best time of day for photos at The Smith Center

Start about two hours before sunset and work east.

Begin in the colonnade while the sun is still up, because that walkway is covered and its light barely changes all afternoon. Move out to the palm plaza and the lawn next, while there is still enough sun to light them. Then take the garden walkway as the buildings start throwing shade, which is when the string lights begin to show up in a photo instead of disappearing into a bright sky. Finish at Pipe Dream, which faces open sky at the east end of the park and holds its light longer than anywhere else on the block.

That is the order every session in the gallery above ran in, and it is the order I would put you in. It also happens to be a straight line, so you are never walking back over ground you already covered.

Weekdays are quieter than weekends, and evenings with a show on bring people onto the plaza an hour beforehand. I check the calendar against your date before we pick a time.

Let’s plan yours

If Symphony Park is the one, send me a message and tell me what you have in mind. I’ll handle the asking and the permit, tell you what time to be there for the light you want, and bring you the engagement session part of it without any of the logistics landing on you. If you want more of downtown in the same afternoon, the Arts District murals are a few minutes south, and if you would rather be on the Strip, look at Bellagio engagement photos.

You do not have to know how to pose. That part is on me.