So have you guys ever been on Model Mayhem?  If you are not aware, it is a site where people who want to be photographers and people who want to be models try to get famous, get fucked, or at the very least take naked pictures of each other.  While there are certainly some actually amazing photographers on there, and a number of actual agency repped models most of it is a cluster fuck.  There are all these male models who send comments to girls like “I wanna pose with you baby!”.  And I am sure a lot of photographers even more lecherous than I use it to see actual naked people.  I have shot a few girls off the site, but mostly it has been a waste of my time.  That being said, their forums are fucking amazing.

The forums seem to be almost completely unregulated and people are so hostile in there.  I mean if you want to know if your work at all holds up, go on those forums.  Those people will rip you a new asshole.  Watching wanna be models/photogs ask for advice on there is so good.  People will just tell them to quit now and never look back.  It is phenomenal.  After spending some time in there one day I came up with an idea.

I want to, as a joke, very seriously attempt to become a professional male model.  The thing is, while I am at least moderately cute, I am in fucking horrible shape, my skin seen the sun in a decade, clothes don’t fit me and it is very clear that I should never, ever be a model.  That being said, I do have one thing going for me… I know a lot of really amazing photographers.  So here is the idea.  I want to go to some of my friends who are pro-photogs and have them take really great photos of me.  Then I will start a Model Mayhem account as a model and then go into the forums and ask people for advice.  Now I am about to post some pretty funny photos with this post, but the only ones I will put on MM will be ALMOST serious shots.  I am going to post photos that while funny to you and me and everyone who knows about this will be believable enough for everyone else to think I am serious.  I am going to go about it in a really serious way and not give up until a) I think it is no longer funny or b) I get an actual paid model gig that doesn’t involve gay sex in any way.

I had been talking about this “becoming a professional male model as performance art” idea for a while, but when I was out in LA my friend Robyn Von Swank was teaching me some photoshop tricks.  We grabbed her camera and spent 10 minutes outside shooting some photos.  She touched a few of them up for me as I watched.  She did a pretty half assed job on them cause we were just fucking around teaching me stuff, but still, they are all good enough to pass for attempts at modeling work.  Most of them are too over the top for this project, but the ones of me leaning on the car are pure gold.  So now I just need a few more “looks” and I can start this hilarious plan I have.

So if any of my photog friends/fans out there, want to shoot me for the benefit of this really stupid project, let me know. I will keep you guys all updated if I ever follow up on this. When I have told people about this idea about half the people just stare at me and the other half think it is kinda brilliant… so let me know how you feel about it. If people think it is amusing, I will actually try to follow through…

But for now enjoy some of these shots that Robyn took of me and make sure to check out her website, because she is a really great photographer, despite how silly/half assed these shots are.  All the photos Robyn took can be found if you click here.

I did an interview for RVA Magazine a few weeks ago. RVA is the cultural magazine for Richmond, VA the town where I went to art school and spent 5 years of my life. When the preview for the issue came out there was about a 60 comment forum going attacking at first me as a person, then me as a photographer and then finally attacking the idea that a photographer not living in Richmond should be covered in a Richmond magazine. Then when I was defended, my defenders were attacked, then eventually the internet wrath turned on the magazine itself and eventually the whole thread was taken down. All this sort of upset me at first, but then I sort of changed my mind and thought it was pretty funny. Which is why I am sort of disappointed that now that the issue has finally come out no one has said anything.

Now about the interview…. Any time I am quoted they are paraphrasing. Not one sentence of the interview is word for word. They did a pretty good job getting across some of my long winded answers frugally, however there are a lot of factual errors. The most significant being:

• My site does not get seen by 1,00,000 people a month. I get around that in monthly page views which probably caused the confusion. Polite webmasters do not talk about traffic publicly!
• The story about how I got the nick name Igor is completely wrong. The real story can be found here.
• The so called “Ambush Nudes” series has never been on my site. The project is actually called “Flashing Strangers” and I am still working on it. If anyone wants to freak out some tourists with me, let me know.

Other than that, and the fact that I supposedly said my nudes were “playful” the interview is pretty good. I also gave them a lot of images to use that they asked for without my logo on them, but I guess they preferred to use the nightlife stuff. Still, it looks pretty good, even with my logo on the images.

Check out the interview by clicking this link and then clicking the “Current Issue” button. My interview starts on page 31. There are pictures of you guys in it! Please feel free to leave nasty comments…

When I was in LA I had all these plans to shoot all these girls and all those plans fell through. I came at the wrong time, or they were too busy, or their care broke down or their boyfriend got arrested or they got chlamydia… You know all the normal excuses that cause shoots to fall apart. What I was not expecting was Evelyn to be in LA. Evelyn is a Gods Girl from California who happened to be in LA with her cousin for a few days. Evelyn once sent me a fan sign for another project I was working on and we have talked online a bunch since then and I could not have been happier to get the chance to shoot her. Unfortunately, as per everything I have shot in the last two weeks, my flash was broken and while some of the shots were very nice, the consistency I wanted wasn’t there. It was sort of driving me nuts a bit but I still got some images I was very happy with. So happy in fact that the last image I posted below ended up as the main image in an article about me that I will be posting later today.

I photographed Evelyn in the motel I was staying at in dirty Hollywood all week.  It was $342 for the week and their was what had to be blood stains on the 2 inch shag carpet.  I killed a roach on the first day I was there and I watching it wriggle around and get lost in that deep carpet kept me up at night scratching invisible bugs off my skin… but I didn’t mention any of that to Evelyn…

After we shot, I shot Evelyn’s cousin, Tayte, too. Thankfully there was enough light by my motel hot tub to shoot her without flash. They ended up being some of the best photos of the trip. Those shots will be up tomorrow or Thursday, but in the mean time see if you can find Tayte’s cameo in the Evelyn pics….

Please click here to see the NSFW Evelyn pictures, and then you can click over here if you want to see more Evelyn at Gods Girls.

Erotica LA lasted for 3 days but I was really only there on 6.13.09.  I showed up really late that Friday and hung out with the Burning Angels and shot a few photos, but that was when I first realized my flash was broken so I got pissed off and went back to my motel.  The next day both conventions were happening so I spent the whole day at the LA Convention Center switching back from weed people to porn people as I mentioned in my last update.  The third day of the convention I completely blew off because I stayed out all night and my editor at the LA Weekly needed the images early so they could go up the next day.  It is probably a good thing too because the LA Lakers won the basketball championship and there was a riot downtown.  I don’t know if it was related to the riot but Joanna Angel had her Escalade stolen from the Staples Center.  I drove by there later that night, but couldn’t get out because people were throwing trash cans at cars and I didn’t get the insurance on my rental.  I wish I had because I would have loved to photograph the madness.

Anyway, back to the porn convention…

The talent wasn’t as huge as the AEE that I shot in Vegas, but Tara Patrick, Ron Jeremey, Jenna Haze and Belladonna were all there… A number of big stars were at the FAME Awards that took place at the same time, but I didn’t think to get press access for that and I didn’t want to fight fans to get mediocre shots.  Plus Steve Prue was their main photographer and as we all know, he kills it. Steve, if you read this… Leave a link to your FAME shots in the comments if you could…

I feel like there is more I want to say, but these are over a week old and I have a terrible memory so I will just let the pictures do the talking.  If anyone has any questions about who any of these people are or what the hell was happening in any of the photos, leave me a comment and I will try to answer it.

In the mean time, click here to see all the photos from Erotica LA 2009. NSFW of course.

During my vacation in LA the LA Weekly hired me to shoot both the Erotica LA porn convention and the THC Expo marijuana convention that were both going on at the same time at the LA Convention center.  Now, I tend to hate shooting conventions, even porn ones.  They are good work and you get to meet a lot of interesting people, but being around people so obsessed with something is a bit much to deal with, and even the press is treated by a lot of people as fan boys.  That being said, amazingly I had a ton of fun covering these two events.  I think a lot of it had to do with me switching back and forth every hour or so between the two worlds.  There was a lot of crossover with half naked girls running around the THC and guys wearing marijuana camouflage in line to get porn star autographs, but it was really interesting to see these two groups of people who’s lives completely revolve around their specific passion.

The THC Expo actually had the most star power.  I saw Tommy Chong there getting swarmed by fans.  Less swarmed were Woody Harrelson and Bill Maher who, while much bigger stars, were not celebrated like Tommy.  They were also trying to hide from photographers a bit.  Woody was just crafty about it while Maher told me straight up not to take his photo.  That is why the only one I have of him is horrible.  Still, it was funny to see how much more excited people were about one half of Cheech and Chong rather than one of the biggest movie stars on earth and one of the few people on TV who is more left wing than I am.  Also there were the world famous Kottonmouth Kings who had that one song in 1999 and then were forgotten about by everyone but white dudes with dreadlocks.  Still, I own one of their records on vinyl so I can’t really talk shit.

I think the main difference between the two conventions was who I shot.  At Erotica I took photos of the people working the booths, because porn stars and strippers are way more interesting then your every day porn geek.  But vice versa is true at the weed convention.  Many of the people working the booths were just normal guys, while the fans ranged from hot stoner chicks, to crazy old guys with beards.  It made for some great shots.

You can see all the photos from the THC Expo 2009 by clicking here.  And the Erotica LA shot should be up later this evening assuming the line at the post office is under 2 hours.

So that is it.  The end of Rated X.  Rated X was the first party I took pictures at in New York.  I had some friends in town, and we went to the party when it was at Luke And Leroy and I took a bunch of pictures of my friends.  Then I took some photos of the hot body contest and some random people.  People started asking me where I was going to post the photos, and I had no idea.  A few months later I was taking party pictures 5 nights a week.  Rated X was where I met a number of the first girls I was seeing when I first moved to the city and it was constantly fun.  When it left Luke And Leroy and became a monthly it was never really the same.  Then again, everyone has told me that it was even better when it was on Ave B where Midway is now.  Personally I think Don Hills is a terrible place to hold a party because it is not anywhere near a Subway and it is a bit big for a lot of parties.

Last night was great though.  I saw tons of people I hadn’t seen in ages.  The hot body contest had a record 12 people in it. Michael T sang and did a T-Rex cover. Plus it was packed with all sorts of fun weirdos to take pictures of. The only problem of course is that my flash is still broken and a lot of the shots are not as good as I want them to be.  The hot body contest is particularly bad… but it does feature some things worth looking at.  Like the mother of three who got naked and made out with a 20 year old ginger kid; a man who would take off his pants, but not his shirt; the finals featured two men, one with a 2 inch penis, the other with a 9 inch one; and last but not least my friend and Gods Girl Sioux Sin who ended up tying for first.  There is a mini set of her in the photo gallery that we shot in a utility closet in the Don Hills basement.

The end of the night was pretty sad with friends and family types staying till the end and watching Michael T dance for everyone still left.  There was a last dance and a lot of applause and an after party at Beauty Bar (which I ended up skipping).  Now, I know you are all heart broken about the end of a legendary NYC party, but I have it from a good source that there might be some special Rated X’s in the future… just no more weekly/monthly type things.  So maybe we will see you all on Halloween again.

Oh God! I don’t know how I forgot.  Rated X is also known as the Panty Party and you got 2-1 drinks if you were in your underwear.  I hae been to Rated X maybe 50 times and I never once took off my pants.  Last night I did… Just to say thanks for the memories… and only like 5 people touched my dick!

Check out the very NSFW photos by clicking right here.

PS. Birthday shout outs to Darenzia, Rochelle and Karen.

So the problem with Webster Hall on Fridays is that there are two parties that I really want to go to. Usually I try to split my time up, or give more shooting time to Trash downstairs because they are like family. But Friday night I got stuck upstairs for some reason. One of the bouncers asked me to make sure no one stood in front of Steve Aoki while he DJ’d. I thought he would come back, but I ended up standing there for over and hour before I just escaped. So I did not get down to Trash until pretty late. Fortunately I made it down in time for Nelli and Kelly and Jess to do some weird dance number. Now if you don’t know them you might expect that I was talking about 3 women but that is not the case. I am in fact talking about 2 gay men and DJ Jess who’s sexuality is intentionally misleading so that he can score with more ladies.

Fortunately for you, right after their bizarre dance routine Stormy and Apathy made out on stage and then got gay married naked. I shot the whole thing without flash because mine is completely destroyed. They sort of look interesting, but I could have used a faster lens. Not the point. The point is that there are about 50 pictures in this gallery and about half of those are naked photos of Stormy and Apathy, so I will let that hold you over till I get the crazy stuff up from my LA trip.

So, please, if you would be so kind, click right here to see the few party photos that I got from Trash. Some of them are okay, despite me working with a very sad flash. Hopefully his replacement will be here soon… He’s in the mail.

I have taken a lot of photos of Steve Aoki. A lot of people talk shit about him as a DJ but if nothing else the guy puts on a hell of a show. He gets people going and he is one of the few DJs who are worth photographing while they are behind a turn table. So I have taken a lot of photos of him. Last night, I spent an hour on stage holding down the corner of his DJ table so these shirtless raver guido dudes (who all seemed quite nice, but they were probably on a lot of E) wouldn’t stand on stage. I took some photos but my flash is so badly broken that unless I am within a foot of a person they come out terribly. Honestly, there were opportunities for great shots all night… and I think I got some of them. A little bit of photoshop and some of these shots could be pretty great. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for that shit, so you are going to have to suffer through some moderately underexposed images. Sorry.

Also, Joachim Garraud DJd after Aoki and he had a mother fucking Keytar. You can, and will not, fuck with that.

Click here to check out the party upstairs at Webster Hall.

Do you guys ever hate it when you gallery software tries to ruin your life by deciding to rebuild itself for no apparent reason and you have to wait like 24 hours for 10 megs of photos to upload?  I know I do.  That is why this is a day late, and the n00dz I promised are being saved for Monday.  Although, if you are upset about said missing n00dz, don’t worry, because assuming that my gallery software functions as normal today I will have some naked people running around on stage from Webster Hall for you tonight.  It is currently 8:30 AM and I plan on sleeping by 10, being up by 5, into the city by 6 and back and working on the site by 8. I will then have 3 hours before the last Rated X ever.   Now that you know far too much information about my plans today, on to the party.

Katie DiCicco asked me to come cover the release of her new video at Santos Party House on Thursday. I think I only knew like four people there, but I made some friends fast.  The bulk of the party was a number of performances starting with some pretty intense dancers and then followed up by Katie and her team.  One of said team members was Jasmine Solano who I am quickly becoming pals with as I have now photographed her sing 4 times, although every time as a guest star with someone else.  I saw her twice at SXSW with Ninjasonik and then with Roxy Cottontail at Roxy’s birthday, and of course she killed it with Katie Thursday night.  I somehow took nearly 600 photos, including the girls getting ready backstage, crowd shots, the performance… and most excitingly product shots!

The party was sponsored by Ty-Ku saki and of all things, Listerine.  Of all the products I have shot, and I have done a lot of marketing gigs, the weirdest I have ever shot was Listerine’s whitening pen.  Not that it doesn’t make sense for a beautification on the go product to target pretty hip image conscious kids, but I just really got a kick out of shooting Katie’s back up dancers attempting to whiten their teeth before they went on.  Truthfully I liked shooting the Ty-Ku too because it glows in the dark.  Plus they told me they would send me a bottle and even though I don’t drink I can use it as a nightlight which will be fantastic for reading.

Anyway, this is a very ill conceived blog update, but you really should check Katie DiCicco out, and then click here to see the many photos from the evening.  As always, here are some of my favorites below.