2020 AVN Awards – 1.25.20

The AVN Awards took place way back on Saturday night and I haven’t posted any photos until now because I was waiting for the story I did for the Daily Beast to come out, and it came out this morning. Not only is the Daily Beast an awesome client (and my mom’s favorite website) but they asked me to write for them which is always fun for me. I have written for the Daily Beast, Playboy, Vice, Noisey, Boing Boing and a bunch of others and I feel like at this point I could build a portfolio that tricks people into thinking I am an actual writer, but I will not.

Anyway, the 2020 AVN Awards makes the 13th time I have covered the AVN Awards week. I thought it was 12 all week, but I just counted to be sure. The first year I went, I went just to party and ended up selling a bunch of the photos, but I didn’t cover the actual awards. The next year I did the red carpet but that was so boring so the next year I hid at the end of the red carpet and shot people off the red carpet. AVN liked my photos so much they started giving me access to the awards and I covered the awards for years. The last two years I was dating Gia Paige so I went as her guest instead of shooting the awards. This year I tried to get back inside the awards and apparently they now have a contract with Showtime that prohibits anyone who isn’t working for AVN from shooting the awards despite me having a massive client like the Daily Beast. They did give me red carpet access, but that is fucking boring so I decided against it.

I decided to shoot people waiting for the red carpet instead of actually on the carpet. It was kinda a risky move and I got a lot of random people in the background and I kept having to switch from flash to natural light back and forth because I don’t want to shoot flash when I don’t have it. I ended up missing some shots because of it, but I think ultimately it’s a lot more interesting to look at these than another set of red carpet photos. Right?

After the show started I went back to my hotel and just relaxed for the first time all week. I came back a couple hours later and took some photos of people coming out of the awards before heading to an absurd party at a mansion that looked like someone just googled “crazy party” and threw everything they could at it. There were fancy cars parked outside and a mermaid in the swimming pool and fire performers and sexy cops and it was just so silly, but I am glad I went because it was very weird, but I only took like 3 photos so sorry about that. 

Anyway, congrats to all of the winners, especially my friends. Angela White won her 3rd Female Performer of the Year award and Small Hands won Male Performer of the Year and I really like both of those people so that was great. My friend Abella Danger won best ass, but we will get to that in a future post… 

Speaking of, this is the first of four AVN Week posts. Next up will be the Adult Entertainment Expo, followed by a post with just a bunch of random left over shots, and then finally, probably Monday, I will post the “Girls of AVN” post that everyone likes so much every year. All the photos, except the Girls of AVN stuff, is already up on Girls of DBB so go check that out now if you are a subscriber.

Now click here to see my off the red carpet shots from the 2020 AVN Awards in Las Vegas.

Little Caprice

Angela White & Jules Jordan

Kyaa

AVN Awards

AVN Awards Protesters

Ginger Banks & Blair Williams

Joanna Angel & Small Hands

 

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2020 AVN Awards

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One Year Later: 2017 AVN Awards In 35mm

Today I am headed to Vegas for another trip to the AVN Awards. I have covered the “Oscars of Porn” for the last decade and it’s always a solid mix of weirdness, fun and horror that people keep paying me to capture.

Every year I tend to have a bunch of clients but this year I oddly just have one. It’s one I am pretty excited about it and it’s paying for my trip, but it’s been weird to see local media just disappear. The Village Voice was sold and I don’t know anyone there anymore. The LA Weekly was sold and they fired their entire staff. Gothamist/DCist/LAist/Chicagoist/Etcist are all gone and I am sure there are a lot more to follow.

Last year one of my clients was Vice. I had shot the AVNs for them in 2016 and they assigned it to me the day I landed in Vegas last year. I was actually really happy with the stuff I shot for them, and they had every intention to publish it, but the AVNs took place the day of the Women’s March last year and with all the political stuff going on they never ran it. Amazingly I still got paid (I was not so lucky with a Gathering of the Juggalos client that never published my work because it happened in between the Republican and Democratic National Conventions), but the photos never saw the light of day… until now!

This huge gallery of 35mm photos from the 2017 AVN Awards (and the Adult Entertainment Expo and surrounding madness) was the large edit I sent to Vice. This would have been edited down to a dozen or so images but I figured I would give you guys everything.

It’s cool to look back and see how some of it seems like it just happened and other stuff seems like it was ages ago. The very first photo is of Blair Williams and her friend Belen. When my Instaxxx book came out I ended up staying at Blair’s house and actually photographed Belen at her place. It feels like I’ve known Blair for ages even though we have only hung out a few times.

I shot Keisha Grey on the ledge of her hotel room which was totally fucking insane and ended up as a full spread in Instaxxx. My friend Lucy Everleigh introduced me to a bunch of cam girls including Ana Mercury who is now a pretty good friend and I finally got to shoot Holly Beth who I ended up staying with once and she actually crashed with me in NYC. There’s even a photo of my girlfriend in here who I didn’t even know at the time and didn’t even notice until just now when I looked at the photos again!

Oh, and there’s also some stuff I shot when we filmed a segment for the actual AVN Awards broadcast on Showtime where Jillian Janson and I were interviewed. I uploaded it here if you want to watch it. 

It’s almost 100 photos and there are at least 15 photos in this gallery I don’t hate. Take a look for it and hopefully I will be back pretty soon with some more AVN madness from the 2018 AVN Awards… but first I am gonna go hang out with my lady in a Vegas hotel room until this insanity starts.

Click here to see all the 35mm photos I shot for Vice for the 2017 AVN Awards weekend last January.

Blair Williams & Belen

Moth

AVN Awards

Jillian Janson

Melissa Moore

Lana Rhoades

Keisha Grey

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2017 AVN Awards In 35mm

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AVN Awards Video!

When the AVN Awards aired I happened to be at my parent’s house in DC and I actually got to watch it. Back in NYC I do not have cable much less fancy things like premium channels. What I do have is the internets and I managed to get a clip of my segment from the awards if you wanna check that out.

The video is really about Jillian Janson who was nominated for Female Performer of the Year but I got to do a shoot with her for the video. They interviewed me and Jillian about our first shoot which I should probably publish sooner rather than later. It was under the Santa Monica Pier and was a ton of fun. Jillian is great as I have probably mentioned before.

This video also features some truly terrible acting from myself and features a misspelling of the word Boredom in Driven By Boredom which happens all the time. I really wish I owned drivenbybordom.com but some asshole bought it and put spam there so please learn how to spell boredom everyone.

Sadly the video does NOT feature the part where we snuck into the kitchen at the Hard Rock for a shoot and got kicked out by security. It would have been amazing but they didn’t have release forms and things so they couldn’t use the video. Tragic.

Anyway, watch this video and don’t forget to look at the photos Jillian and I shot for it if you haven’t already. Also thanks to Scott and Jeff and the crew who filmed this thing for including me!

 

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2017 AVN Awards – 1.21.17

I am back from my two week LA & Vegas trip and ready to get you some photos. I do this trip nearly every year around the Adult Video News Awards. I think I have shot the AVNs or at least the events around the AVNs every year since 2008. The trip is how I got started photographing people in the adult industry and now it’s become a good way to see friends, meet new models and make some money… plus with only a few hour drive to LA it’s a good excuse to hit up LA for a week without having to pay for a flight.

Given that the AVN Awards happened over a week ago I am clearly a bit late on these photos, but I shot them for the LA Weekly and posted that link everywhere so I figured that if you really wanted to see my AVN Awards coverage you had plenty of opportunities to do so. That being said, my edit is much bigger than the LA Weekly gallery and of course you don’t get to read a long, pointless, poorly written blog about it.

This year’s AVN’s were pretty cool because a lot of my friends won stuff. Adriana Chechik won Female Performer of the Year, Greg Lansky won back to back Director of the Year awards and my friends cleaned up the acting awards. Best supporting actress went to Joanna Angel and Xander Corvus won best actor. Best Actress went to Kleio Valentien who I actually helped get into porn many years ago after sending this 2009 photo shoot to Burning Angel! (Update: That gallery is broken for some reason but you can find it on Girls of DBB!)

Also it was hosted by Riley Reid (and Aspen Rae) and a bunch of other friends won awards too like my LA landlord Abella Danger who won best Star Showcase. Holly Hendrix won Best New Starlet and we aren’t friends yet but we talked about shooting soon so hopefully we will be by next AVN.  Oh, and Sgt Kabukiman NYPD was there and he’s pretty much family.

Okay, let’s get to these photos. My shots from the Adult Entertainment Expo will be up ASAP too.

Ps. Donate to my Kickstarter. Many AVN Awards winners are in the book.

PPs. Did I mention Flo Rida performed? He did. We got low.

Click here to see all the photos from the 2017 AVN Awards at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas, NV.

Adriana Chechik Wins Performer Of The Year

Flo Rida

Annika Albrite & Mick Blue

Doug Benson & April O'Neil

Kendra Sunderland

Carter Cruise & Spencer

Kleio Valentien

2017 AVN Awards

Broques & CobrasnakeBroques & Cobrasnake

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2017 AVN Awards

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2016 AVN Awards – 1.23.16

Another year another AVN Awards… The so called “Oscars of porn” returned to the Hard Rock in Vegas and I was there to take pictures for the millionth time in a row. This year I was covering the awards for the Village Voice & LA Weekly as well as Vice and even AVN themselves. I had to take a massive amount of photos to take so that I could make all my clients happy. I shot stage shots for AVN, crowd shots for the Voice & LA Weekly and then I shot 35mm film for Vice. So far everyone seemed pretty happy except that my film isn’t ready for pick up until tomorrow.

I also was shooting the AVN Week for Greg Lansky who runs Blacked and Tushy. Greg won best director and between him, Blacked and Tushy they won 16 awards! Like, that is fucking insane. Plus Riley Reid won female performer of the year and Abella Danger won best new starlet, both of which probably would not have happened without Blacked and Tushy. So it was pretty awesome to see Greg and company clean up after hanging out with them all week. I felt real psyched for them despite not having anything to do with any of it.

Other stuff of note…

My exgirlfriend Kimberly Kane was elected into the porn Hall Of Fame! My first porn friend Joanna Angel was in her HOF class too (she also hosted the damn thing!) as were Dana DeArmond and Nikki Benz so it was pretty awesome to see a bunch of people I like a lot go in together. They showed one of my photos of KK on the big screen when they announced her too. My buddy Hannibal Buress came to Vegas that weekend so I got him a ticket to the awards. They set him right by Ron Jeremy which was kinda hilarious. And there was a super emotional moment when one of my favorite porn humans Carter Cruise handed off her best new starlet crown to Abella Danger who is one of her best friends. I was kinda tearing up a bit which I didn’t expect from a porn award show.

Also, Waka Flocka Flame performed which was kinda great. He put on one of the best shows I have ever seen at the Gathering of the Juggalos and while this wasn’t on that level it was great to see him do his thing with a bunch of porn girls and strippers running around. Plus he followed me on Twitter so I gotta give him some extra props to justify mentioning that he follows me on Twitter right? Did I mention he follows me on Twitter? You should follow me on Twitter too.

Lastly thanks to all the porn people, especially the hot ones, that came up to me out of nowhere to tell me that they were fans of my photography. The best part about photographing the porn scene is that it’s one of the only places people think I am a good photographer. I am a fairly mediocre photographer but in an industry filled with lazy uninspired creeps a slightly less lazy uninspired creep really shines. Thanks guys!

Now click here to see all my photos from the 2016 AVN Awards at the Join at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas!

Ps. If you haven’t already make sure you check out my photos from the 2016 Adult Entertainment Expo.

Riley Reid Female Performer Of The Year

Anikka Albrite & Joanna Angel Host The 2016 AVN Awards

Waka Flocka Flame @ AVN Awards

Carter Cruise & Abella Danger Best New Starlet

Hannibal Buress @ AVN Awards

Jesse Jane, Nikki Benz & Jules Jordan @ AVN

Anikka Albrite & Mick Blue

Aidra Fox & August Ames

Jessie Andrews & Cobrasnake

Juanito Blanco!

April O'Neil & Doug Benson

 

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2016 AVN Awards

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