Awards: Honorable Mentions | Smartphone | Landscape/nature | Artistic/abstract | People in the moment | Places | Grand prizeWelcome to Desert Companion’s second annual “Focus on Nevada” photo contest. A quick note before you feast your eyes on the pages of terrific imagery that follow: This year, to bring a heightened mojo to these proceedings, we enlisted a cohort of judges — folks whose aesthetic sophistication jumped the decision-making process to a new level.

Awards: Honorable Mentions | Smartphone | Landscape/nature | Artistic/abstract | People in the moment | Places | Grand prizeWelcome to Desert Companion’s second annual “Focus on Nevada” photo contest. A quick note before you feast your eyes on the pages of terrific imagery that follow: This year, to bring a heightened mojo to these proceedings, we enlisted a cohort of judges — folks whose aesthetic sophistication jumped the decision-making process to a new level.

Photography by Linda alterwitz (l) fine art , Aaron mayes (A) people, and Jakob McCarthy (J) architecture Why shoot Maryland Parkway instead of, you know, that other big, insanely photogenic street a few miles away? Why, when we assigned these three photographers to capture that elusive quality known as sense of place, did we opt for the understudy instead of the diva? Easy. Visual as the Strip is, we didn’t want the usual dream-factory celebrations.

It’s easy to get lost in Las Vegas — well, not get lost, exactly, but lose touch with a sense of place. If the Strip riotously channels everywhere but here, the cityscape that flanks our neon lagoon insists on placelessness: It can often present itself as, at best, a suspiciously Southwestish melange of strip malls, tract homes, weedy lots with political billboards.

With a new leader, the Las Vegas Urban League starts to think bigPoor North Las Vegas. Mired in debt, its tax base shriveling, a city limping along as the state considers taking over its finances.

02 Alisha KerlinClark County Government CenterRoadrunners: zippy, darty, a blur of motion! What if, artist Alisha Kerlin wondered after seeing a roadrunner doorstop at a swap meet, you turned them into heavy, immobile sculptures with overtones of Italian futurism? That’ll put some meep-meep in the Rotunda Gallery! Roadrunners that Won’t Run Far shows through July 25 in the Clark County Government Center, 500 S. Grand Central Parkway.

Polaroid that is. At the Las Vegas Camera Club the once-obsolete photo system enjoys a new snap. Get the full picture!

Donato Cabrera debuts as conductor for the Las Vegas Philharmonic on September 27. Steve Aoki spins at Hakkasan and Wet Republic. Get the big picture here.

Awards: Honorable Mentions | Smartphone | Landscape/nature | Artistic/abstract | People in the moment | Places | Grand prizeWelcome to Desert Companion’s second annual “Focus on Nevada” photo contest. A quick note before you feast your eyes on the pages of terrific imagery that follow: This year, to bring a heightened mojo to these proceedings, we enlisted a cohort of judges — folks whose aesthetic sophistication jumped the decision-making process to a new level.

1 Corey Levitan doesn’t want his infant daughter to grow up to be a stripper. “But, crap, good-looking 18-year-old Las Vegas females can earn 10 times what I do in a year by grinding into male crotches to Def Leppard’s ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me,’” he wrote in our May issue.