Many years ago I went to LA for the first time to hang out with my little brother who was trying to make a movie that never got made. While we were there some weird parties were thrown. 10 years later several of these people run actual businesses, one of them is a Hollywood producer, two of the people who met at these parties are now married and are about to give birth to a human child, my brother has moved to LA permanently and I had sex with one of the girls in the pictures in 2010ish. The bongkey lives on.

One of my favorite musicians Teddy Blanks just released his album Therapy yesterday. He has been working on it for years and it’s his musical response to several emotional blows he suffered in 2010 and 2011. One of those being the death of our mutual close friend and collaborator Ross Harman. The final track on Therapy “This That And The Other” is a song dedicated to Ross which I had to listen to a half dozen times before I could get through it without crying. The track was available on the Ross Harman tribute album but it was never available digitally until now.

Therapy takes incredibly painful moments and translates them into dancey 80s influenced synth pop gems that will have you dancing and smiling if you don’t listen to carefully to the lyrics. I think the best pop music takes feelings of loss, sadness, anger and depression and turns them into catchy feel good tunes that help you deal with your own problems. I know that there have been a lot of records that have helped me through the worst times in my life. Certainly Teddy’s music helped a lot after we lost such a good friend.

For Lena Dunham friends, Teddy composed the score for her first film Tiny Furniture and this album also features “When You Come Home” which was the song featured in the Tiny Furniture trailer. The score for the film is available on Teddy’s Bandcamp for free.

I love this record Therapy and I am so glad Teddy finally put it out in the world. So check it out now and if you love it, spread the word and cough up a few dollars for the download.

PS. YouTube superstar Casey Neistat turned the second track, Famous Friends into a pretty epic music video that was actually edited by my brother. Check it out.

Yesterday over on the main blog I posted pictures from the Dolfans NYC NFL draft event. Well now we have a video! I don’t expect you guys to care, but I look pretty sexy in it so I figured I had to share it with you. Plus it has Ray Finkle references and some weirdness that you might dig even if you don’t care about football… but then again probably not, so just skip this post and go back to doing cocaine or listening to Skrillex or whatever the hip kids are doing these days.

There are a million websites out there that teach you how to gain users on Twitter or how to be “engaging” and nonsense like that, but very few of them teach you how not to be a fucking idiot. I guess they take for granted that you are not a moron even though they are giving you advice like “interact with people” and “provide thoughtful content”. I am gonna teach you a few things that will keep you from looking like a complete asshole on Twitter despite your ridiculous avatar.

I am not a social media expert or “guru”. No one has ever asked me to be on a pannel at SXSW or asked me to give a talk at TED. My personal Twitter, @drivenbyboredom has over 7,000 followers but that is more of a result of me posting naked photos than any social networking skill. In fact, I would probably have a lot more followers if I didn’t constantly post insane Tweets 20 times a day.

I do run several Twitter accounts, the most popular of which is @TinyFurniture, the Lena Dunham film that predated her HBO show Girls. I also work for numerous clients in my professional photography life and constantly deal with people who run social media accounts for major brands. I have been on Twitter since 2008 and have seen Twitter rise and change and seen the way people interact with Twitter change. But in all that time there are a few mistakes people make over and over again that blow my mind. So I decided I would address them and create a simple article that I can send people when they are doing Twitter wrong. If you run a brand and hire an intern or even a social media “expert” send them here first.

• Do Not Begin A Tweet With An @

This is #1 problem on Twitter and I have no idea how so many people with hugely popular Twitter accounts still do this wrong. I wrote an entire blog post on just this one point and you should read it. The basic idea is that only start at Tweet with an @ if you are replying to someone. Otherwise most people will never see the Tweet. Not only is this not effective but it tells everyone that you have no idea what you are doing. If I did marketing for a brand and I saw my social media person do this I would fire them immediately, they clearly lied about something to get their job.

• Only Use 140 Characters

This seems very simple but you would be surprised how often people are confused by this. When running a Twitter account for a client they will be constantly sending you emails with what to Tweet. For some reason these carefully crafted Tweets are almost always over 140 characters and come filled with useless filler that the 140 limit is designed to purge. There are Tweet lengthener programs that you can use if you need to post a longer Tweet but unless you are a journalist don’t use them. The longer Tweet programs are great if you have a lot of information to get out quickly but most of the time people use them because they don’t want to take the time to craft a quality Tweet. No one wants to have to click to an external site to read a few extra words about how awesome your lunch was that could have easily fit into one, or at worst broken into two Tweets.

• Learn How To ReTweet And Reply

Hey internet “celebrities”! We get it! People like you! Stop ReTweeting compliments! It makes you look like a self obsessed asshole. RTs should be used to share something interesting/funny/newsworthy with your followers. They should not be used to brag about shit and the certainly shouldn’t be used to acknowledge that you saw the reply. If you Tweet something and someone replies to you “I agree!” and you RT that I will unfollow you so fucking fast. If someone asks you a question, and you think the answer would be beneficial to the rest of your followers, please answer it in a RT, but if not, just reply back to them. I follow a lot of sports writers and they do a great job of RTing a question and answering Tweets so that everyone gets the benefit of that information but if someone tells you how much they love your new mix tape and you RT them with a  ”Thanks!” before the RT I will break your fingers with your own Serrato box. Also, if you really want to be a nerd about it, if you have to change someone’s Tweet to fit your response in 140 characters change the RT to MT for “modified Tweet”.

• #Don’tAbuseHashtags
  

Hashtags on Twitter exist so that people can track a newsworthy story or so they can follow something specific like a sports team or festival or conference. Most people who abuse hashtags do it because a) they think they will somehow gain more followers b) they think they will get something “trending” or c) they just have no idea what a hashtag is and think it’s just part of the language of Twitter.

The reality is no one is searching for random words on Twitter. There is no reason to Tweet something like “I am at the #beach right now! #spring” unless you want me to murder you in your sleep. You DO want to use a hashtag if you are at a music festival because people are checking #SXSW or #Coachella because they want to see what’s going on at this moment even if that involves eating from a gross food truck or celeb spotting the third tamboreene player from the Polyphinic Spree . Another reason is if you are talking about a newsworthy story like Hurricane Sandy. Using a hashtag like #sandy or #sandyrelief helped people follow the storm and learn how they could help.

If you are a brand and you want to use a hashtag, do it very carefully. Unless you are doing  a MASSIVE campaign the chances are you aren’t going to get anything trending. If someone clicks your hashtag and only a few things come up it’s going to be embarrassing and damaging to the brand. On the other hand, if you are running a contest via Twitter and you want to track how many people have entered using a hashtag is a great idea. Hashtag branding can work very well but you need to be very carful about it and do it in a way that makes sense.

Because of poor use of hashtags they actually have become part of the language of social media, so once in a while using a hashtag as a joke can be funny or add to a Tweet by summarizing something in the shortest amount of characters possible. But if you run social media for a brand it’s probably better to avoid it because 9 times out of 10 it just looks stupid. #fact

• Follow Friday Is Fucking Stupid

Follow Friday or #FF is the idea that on Friday people share their favorite Tweeters with their followers, but the truth is no one ever reads them. I get added to #FF Tweets all the time and no one ever follows me because of it. Do you know why? Because people just use FF as a way to suck up to people as a way of guilting people into #FFing them or just begging for a RT. The only thing more useless than a #FF Tweet is someone RTing a #FF Tweet. That’s like saying “You are right! I am awesome! I should let people who already follow me know that they should be following me!” Another brilliant Twitter move is to put the #FF at the end of the Tweet instead of the beginning so that no one can see the #FF in the first place (See the first point in this list). If you want to share with your followers a great Twitter, tell them that. Explain WHY they should follow someone. For example “Follow @drivenbyboredom because he is fucking brilliant and posts photos of boobs at least 10 times a week.”

• Be Careful When Bringing Other Social Networks Into Twitter

Twitter is the perfect tool to bring all your social networks into one place. I use Instagram, Tumblr, Vine and of course have my own website. I send all these things to Twitter so that if you follow my Twitter you get all of my content. I recommend you do the same but you need to be careful about it. Nothing is more annoying on Twitter than sending the same shit there over and over again. For example, if you take a photo of your breakfast using Instagram and you send to Tumblr and Twitter you better not have your Tumblr set up to auto post to your  Twitter too because what happens is that you send the same boring photo to your Twitter twice with one link going to Instagram and one going to Tumblr. That is so fucking annoying.  If people ask you questions on Tumblr please don’t send them all to Twitter. Nothing is more annoying than my Twitter feed getting completely filled up with your dumb answers to dumber questions. And if you use Foursquare  please, please do not send it to Twitter. No one except your stalker cares that you just checked into a coffee house.

• Stop Live Tweeting Award Shows

Please? Just for me? If I cared about the Kids Choice Awards or whatever nonsense you are live blogging I would have watched them in the first place. You aren’t funny, shut the fuck up and go outside. Thanks.

I am shooting this Famous Hill party (the sequel) on Saturday and I have no idea what I am in for. A friend of mine put me in touch with these guys and told me their parties were out of control. Then I got an email suggesting people dress up like they are in Game of Thrones and you win a prize for best Game of Thrones costume or prop. What? Sounds weird and I love weird. There is live painting and a bunch of DJs that are probably going to play some music and I am going to be taking photos of stuff. Come get your photo taken and hang out. It’s at Spike Hill right by the Bedford L stop so it’s real easy for hipsters to find.  Look at this flyer and check out the event on Facebook and I will see you on Saturday.

I have so many photos that exist in the world yet very rarely does anyone ask me to put them on walls. That seems like a mistake cause they look pretty awesome outside of a computer. And once in a while people actually buy my photos. Just today my photo in the The Dirty Show in Detroit sold. Huzzah. Coincidently two of my photos are in shows/parties tomorrow (Saturday).

My friends over at Troma are doing a fundraiser for the follow up to their insane documentary about the Cannes Film Festival. They have raised over 20k over on Indigogo and hopefully they will raise a bunch of money tomorrow. I photographed Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman for the cover of the Village Voice and one of the photos from that shoot plus a copy of the Voice the photo is in will be on sale. The event is all day long from noon to 2AM so you have plenty of time to come by and check out all the Tromatic art. The show is in the Lower East Side at Culture Fix. Occupy Cannes!

The other show is more of a party but there will be a bunch of art on the wall. My friend Chris over at Brooklyn Wildlife is doing a Valentines Day themed party/art show and I put a photo of me having sex in a bathroom in it. Seriously. It’s not super graphic, you can only see my hand in it, but it’s a lot edgier than anything I would post on Driven By Boredom despite the lack of any actual nudity. It’s a pretty hot shot and it should be a fun party. The party is at Free Candy Gallery in Crown Heights.

The flyers are below. Hopefully I will see you guys Saturday!

My whole life I have had depression. When I was younger it was really bad but it really hit it’s peak when I was about 20. I remember thinking how great things were going in my life. I had a girlfriend, a lot of friends and I was working a bullshit summer job but I enjoyed it. Despite this I felt overwhelming depression and when things in my life got worse my depression got worse. A break up and two break downs later I had dropped out of college and found myself on some anti-depressant meds that ended up working pretty well. I went back to college, got my degree and by the time I was 27 I was living in NYC and I had stopped taking the meds completely and had never been “happier”.

So what changed? The meds helped for a while… they at least stabilized me when I was at my worse and the move to NYC was fantastic for me. I had always wanted to live in NYC and pretty much the moment I moved here I knew it was at home. But I’ve been off meds for more than 5 years and New York’s charm has worn off a bit, but I am still “happier” than I have ever been. How did I do it? I made a conscious decision to not prioritize happiness. I decided living an interesting life was far more important than being happy. If I have depression, I am always going to be depressed so why try to fight that? I decided just to live an interesting life and if bad things happen I can just write it off as a new experience. The horrible break up I went through when I was 21 made me realize that even the worst pain fades eventually and that when bad shit happens you can to some degree move past it. Humans are very adaptive and can deal with anything. You just keep moving and everything will be fine.

I just decided that I didn’t care about happiness and that somehow made me happier. I was able to deal with depression with a realization that in the future whatever was bothering me wouldn’t make that much difference. If I get mugged tonight I might have a black eye and $100 less dollars but a year from now all that I will have is a cool story about getting mugged. I don’t let myself get upset about parking tickets and broken cell phones and the little bullshit in life because I know that in 6 months none of that shit will have any effect on my life. I go to events I hate because I know that the great photos I get will be all that remains and the lack of sleep and bullshit I had to deal with won’t make any difference in the long run.

The whole thing sounds pretty stupid and fairly reminiscent of a t-shirt worn by one of the kids on my high school wrestling team had “Pain is temporary but glory lasts forever”. The idea of just ignoring happiness and wishing away sadness is easier said than done, but it has some real scientific basis. I recently read The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely. Ariely was burned severely as a teen and has spent his entire life dealing with crippling pain but he was able to deal with it and lead a reasonably happy life. Much of his book is about the adaptability of man and how no matter how good or bad things are in life they eventually average out. He talks about how people who move from a cold weather climate to a warm weather climate are much happier for a few months but eventually they get used to it. The same thing works in reverse. If you move from LA to North Dakota you might hate it for a while but you eventually get used to it.

I had this idea in my head that if you are a innately happy person you are going to be happy no matter what your situation and if you are an unhappy person, nothing material is going to make you happy. Ariely’s research seemed to back this up but it wasn’t until I saw a TED talk by Dan Gilbert about happiness did I want to blog about it.

Gilbert talks about the science of happiness and how you can trick yourself into being happy and that false happiness is just as valid as natural happiness. Humans overestimate how happy or unhappy things will make them. He talks about how a year after someone wins the lottery or becomes a paraplegic their happiness returns to where they were before their change in fortune. His argument is that you can trick yourself into being happy. My argument is that happiness is bullshit and you just shouldn’t prioritize it.

If you aren’t happy, don’t look for happiness. Look for something else that give you meaning. Ignore happiness. Lead an interesting or meaningful life and in the long run you might end up happier than you think you can be.

Ps. Sorry for this rant but this is exactly what these new DBB B-Sides are all about. It’s a place that I can blog about anything without fucking up the main page of my site.

It’s been a minute since I added a new B-Side because there have been some delays in my site redesign but since we are getting closer to the redesign I wanted to start posting more of these. B Sides are going to be a big part of this blog in the future as a way for me to post non photography related content without dragging the main photography content down to the bottom.

I wanted to post today because 95% of my friends and fans do not care about hockey and for this I hate you. Hockey is amazing and you guys are missing out. I am so glad hockey is back because football is the only other sport I actually care about and the Miami Dolphins are not in the playoffs again. The only good part about a non Dolphins playoffs is watching the New England Patriots lose. I sort of had a feeling the Pats were going to choke. I should have gone to one of those sports betting sites and put down some cash. I need the money.

Since football is dead to me I am so glad hockey is back. I thought the lockout was going to deprive me of another season of hockey and I was going to have a miserable few months before the NFL Draft, but fortunately they figured it out and we have hockey again. I was out of town for a week and I missed my Washington Capitals first three games, but I finally got to watch them play last night. Despite them losing in overtime to the hated NJ Devils it was still so great to watch hockey again and you guys should get on board because the game is god damned amazing.

Anyway, I just wrote this post as an excuse to post this video of Alexander Ovechkin who is one of my favorite hockey players and pretty much the funniest guy in sports. Enjoy.

Tonight, at Galapagos Art Space, I have a bunch of photos in an art show called “The Other American Dream” which is described as “A night of burlesque, acclaimed nude photography, music, magic, and more in celebration of figures on the frontier of the New American Sexuality”. Now while I realize that any event with magic and burlesque sounds like there are going to be a lot of people there dressed like it’s the 1890′s I assure you this will be an event not to be missed. Aside from having a chance to buy art from some of the best contemporary nude photographers for insanely cheap prices you will get to see Stoya do naked acrobatics and there is a kissing booth and Buck Angel is going to be there and um tons of weird deviant things that you will tell your grandchildren about. Also Stormy Leather and Madame Rosebud are two of the best burlesque performers in NYC and I would know because I have seen more burlesque than I have ever wanted to. Most of it is garbage but Stormy and Rosebud kill it every time. Plus the last Darling House art show was a really good time. Do not sleep on this.

The show is at 8pm tonight which I realize is in just a few hours and it also costs $20 which is more than I have paid to get into a party this century BUT it will be worth it and you get a free drink. Also all the money goes to putting out a nude art magazine of some sort which seems important somehow.

So yeah. Go to this tonight.

Ahoy! My punk rock cover band Fucking Bullshit doesn’t play very often, but we are playing tonight at Hank’s Saloon in Park Slope! Not only that but we are playing for free AND it’s a Sandy relief benefit so we are accepting donations of both cash and supplies. If you have warm weather gear, food, batteries, baby supplies or anything else bring it out and come see some fun punk rock covers. PLUS there is a sideshow act (Donny Vomit) and Legs Malone is going to do some burlesque thing and that will be awesome. There is more info on Facebook but you should just come even if you have a personal vendetta with the opening act (unlikely). The show starts at 8 and we probably play at 9 but honestly I have no idea. Whatever the case it will be fun and I will be drunk and violent.. but in a good way!  Above is some video of us doing what we do.

Danny Brown was one of my favorite parts of the Gathering of the Juggalos. He’s hilarious, I dig his music and I totally did not exepect him to be at the Gathering of the Juggalos. Maybe I should have. He and ICP are both from Detroit and they clearly have a mutual respect for each other. This video of Danny Brown at the Gathering is a better view of what the Gathering is like than that American Juggalo documentary.  Every time I go there I always think about how I wish I could be in the car of some of these rap acts as they are driving into the Gathering and this shows that experience perfectly. The Gathering is a special place, as fucked up as it is, and it’s awesome to see someone like Danny Brown appreciate how fucking wild the Gathering really is.

On top of that there is a real good shot of me taking Danny’s photo at the 3:54 mark…

Check out the new Black Light Burns video “How To Look Naked: Chapter 2″ directed by my friend Agata Alexander. I got to watch a rough draft of it at her place a few weeks ago and it’s really wild. Agata clearly knows what she is doing even if the music isn’t exactly my cup of tea. Plus my girlfriend Kimberly Kane is in it naked and crying and there is a bunch of other NSFW stuff in it like my pal Aiden Starr rolling around naked with my girlfriend. Good times. Watch it!

When I first started Driven By Boredom up again in 2007 after a break of a year or two I used to post nudes of celebrities because people like them and it draws a lot of Google traffic (Vanessa Hudgens comes to mind). I stopped posting them when I started doing photography full time for a living because it looks pretty unprofessional and all that. This new DBB B-Side blog seems like a perfect solution where I can still post these celebrity nude photos but I can keep it off the main page.

So with that in mind here is a picture of Alison Pill topless. She was in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World but more importantly she is one of the main characters in Newsroom which is pretty much my favorite show on TV right now. She accidentally posted the photo to Twitter which seems like a pretty hard thing to do. She apologized to her Twitter followers but she is a total babe so I don’t think anyone minds.

Click the photo of Alison above to see the uncensored photo.

Well technically they are ape movies, but that lacks alliteration.

After Clint Eastwood gave  his crazy talking to an invisible Obama speech last night at the republican convention it was a good reminder that famous republicans have a history of starring in movies with apes. Clint Eastwood starred in not one but two movies with an Orangutan named Clyde… Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can. Every Which Way is actually a fantastic movie but it doesn’t compare to the classic Planet Of The Apes starring gun nut and diseased GOP loving lunatic Charlton Heston. The original Planet Of The Apes is honestly one of my favorite movies and both Eastwood and Heston are two of my favorite actors despite my hatred for their political views. The third famous republican who starred in a movie with an Ape is of course Ronald Reagan and his infamous film Bedtime For Bonzo where he starred across from a chimp. Now I don’t care for Reagan’s acting or his politics but if you haven’t seen Bedtime For Bonzo you really need to just for the weirdness of it if nothing else. How the hell did we elect this clown?

I hope this is all a coincidence and not some sort of GOP/APE plan to take over the planet. Whatever the case watch these trailers and if you haven’t seen any of the movies you should immediately do so and then go register to vote.

I got a chance to see Mike Birbiglia’s mostly autobiographical film Sleepwalk With Me at SXSW this year and it was fantastic. It’s based off his one man show of the same name and it was produced by Ira Glass of This American Life Fame. I have seen Mike do stand up in NYC several times over the years but I first heard of his hilarious and some times terrifying bouts of sleepwalking on This American Life. Mike has terrible problems with sleepwalking and, not to give too much away, once jumped out a hotel window in his sleep. Seriously. That happened in real life.

I am a big fan both Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia. When I worked a job where I could listen to head phones all day I listened to over 300 episodes of This American Life in under six months. I got laid off the day after I finished the last episode. Mike actually introduced me to Ira Glass at a party and I got to talk to him for an entire five minutes which was sort of a highlight of my year. They made a short film to promote the opening weekend(s) of their movie and it’s pretty delightful. (I don’t think I would use the word delightful unless under the spell of NPR.) You should watch the video and then if you live in New York you should go to the IFC Center this weekend and watch it. The film will also be opening in LA and Chicago next weekend. At least one of them will be at all the opening weekend screenings to do a Q&A which they claim (while dressed as ushers) will be better than the actual movie itself.

My dude Prince Terrence is at it again. The debut Hussle Club EP, Children Of The Underground, is out for free thanks to Scion AV. If you follow this blog you know about Hussle Club already and if not all you need to do is click here for a little refresher. As scary as it is to brand music and art with corporate logos it’s great when you can find someone to sponsor a release so you can just give it away instead of trying to sell it to people who are just going to download it for free somewhere anyway. This record is rad and you need to click here to download it for free.

My punk cover band Fucking Bullshit hasn’t played a show since we played the Brooklyn Zombie Crawl after party in late May. Between us all of us traveling and our guitarist having to animate the new season of Metalocalypse we haven’t even had time to practice since then. About to head to our first practice in almost two months and I am fucking psyched. Our next show is on August 3rd at Don Pedro’s in Brooklyn so put that on your calendar if you haven’t seen us yet or for some reason want to see us again.  But more importantly you need to check out this video of us doing Black Flag’s song Nervous Breakdown at the zombie crawl. The video was edited and photographed by Daniel Huskey. Chris Carr and Backseat Conceptions provided additional footage. Shit looks pretty wild and it clearly proves that I am the greatest punk rock cover band front man of all time.

Every time I shoot a music festival I have a bunch of kids come up to me and ask me how I get my press pass. They want to stand in front of the stage and get access to their favorite bands and are envious of the photographers who get paid to do it. I just want to break it down for everyone and explain why I hate covering music festivals and why they are often the hardest and most annoying things I have to photograph.

First the good stuff. I get to take photos for a living and I should stop my complaining right here. But I won’t. There are some things I really enjoy about covering music festivals. I love to travel and I love to get paid well for my work. I get to fly all over the US to shoot these things and I get paid pretty well to do it because they are usually long and full of billable hours. Plus airline miles! I like to see my friends who are in the music industry who I only get to see at these things and often I get to see a band I really dig. Plus they are hard work and that makes me feel like I am doing an honest days work instead of shooting a party for three hours and then going home to edit photos in my underwear. That being said, music festivals are a huge pain in my ass.

Music Festivals Are Huge- Often music festivals are spread out over a massive area, some times in the case of SXSW or CMJ over a whole city. When you are carrying two cameras, three lenses (including a huge telephoto), extra batteries, memory cards, chargers, a jacket, food & water and your camera bag it gets fucking draining. Think about how tired you are after a day at a festival and add 50lbs and the fact you pretty much have to run everywhere to get to the next stage. Fun times.

This Is Only One Of Lollapalooza’s Many Stages

Long Hours – I know I just told you how I actually enjoy the long hours and hard work but I don’t enjoy that stuff until it’s over and I am looking back. When I am on day three of working from noon to four AM and then editing photos until 8am I am not happy about it. I am in fact miserable. Which brings me to clients.

Take Naps When You Can – DJ Dances With White Girls Naps At WMC

Clients Need Photos Right Away – Most of the time I shoot an event a client needs the photos by 8am the next day if not sooner. So when everyone else is going out to party you are stuck in a hotel room or on a friends couch editing and uploading photos. Clients don’t understand why you can barely keep your eyes open the next day and half the time they don’t even do anything with your images until Monday. Still, I always make sure to have a fast turn around to keep clients happy. Nothing pisses off a client more than a photographer taking forever to get them photos.

The Weather – No matter what happens you are expected to get the shot so if it rains you better be prepared. I don’t mind getting wet so I rarely bring a poncho but I have weather gear for my camera and my camera bag. Music festivals are often in the summer so the sun can be brutal, but then it can get freezing at night so you better have a jacket because you sure as hell can’t go back to your hotel. If the sun is bright your photos can suck, if there’s no sun your photos can suck. No matter what festival you are photographing something nature is going to do to you is going to make your job harder.

Don’t Forget Your Rain Gear!

Festival Press People - Before I bash all these PR people that work music festivals I have to point out that they have a hard job. It’s not always their fault that shit is fucked up and they are dealing with journalist after journalist yelling at them for the same things. Because of this they tend to be extremely bitchy and unhelpful especially if you are working for a smaller outlet. Fortunately, I shoot a lot of this stuff for Village Voice Media and I have a little more pull than if I was shooting for my blog, but it’s still a huge pain in the ass dealing with getting credentials, getting the right credentials, getting access to whatever you need access too, etc. An amazing amount of stress is put on a photographer just because we have to deal with people who for some reason want to make our jobs really difficult for seemingly no reason.

Band Press People - Music publicists are often a weird breed of people and the more successful they are the harder they are to deal with. I don’t even run a music blog and I get hundreds of emails a week from these people but when you need a favor from them they often don’t respond to emails or give you a hard time. Some of them are great at their jobs and a pleasure to deal with, but I have dealt with so many bad ones it’s hard not to include them on this list. The biggest problem though is with these insane contracts PR people try to get you to sign if you want to shoot bigger bands. Acts like Foo Fighters, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears all have these crazy contracts that say the band owns the photographs once you take them. They are total bullshit, legally suspect and I never sign them. All other photographers should do the same.

Then Again Maybe Dealing With PR Girls Isn’t All Bad…

Photo Pits - Photo pits are the bane of my existence. They are the three feet in front of the stage full of photographers. At big festivals like Lollapalooza the stage is 15 feet in the air and you can’t even shoot the bands without a telephoto lens shooting straight up at them. Often you can only enter them from the far side of the stage so you have to walk through a crowd of thousands of kids just to get to the pit. They are filled with photographers who all are getting the exact same shot and you have to pretty much shove people out of the way just to get an unblocked. I am generally a very friendly photographer to work with in a pit and always there to help people and make sure everyone gets a good shot, but recently as more and more amateurs show up in photo pits I have started to become a dick. Which brings me to my next point.

Nothing Like A Bunch Of Photographers To “Enhance” A Shot – Fishbone At Voodoo Fest

Other Photographers – I have been shooting music festivals for more than 15 years and I started shooting bands for a little zine I published when I was in high school. I didn’t really know how this shit worked but I was trying. I am sure I pissed off some of the seasoned pros, but it wasn’t as big of a deal because there were never more than a handful of us in the pit. With the advent of blogs and digital cameras more and more people are getting media access to music festivals and most of them have no idea what they are doing. So many kids who have no experience are willing to shoot these things for free because they want to go to the festival but they have no idea how to act in the pit. Now I truly believe that if you are a good photographer you can get the shot you need with nearly any camera but filling up the photo pit with kids with kit lenses, point and shoot cameras and iPhones is insane. If you are shooting with a lens that can’t even fill the frame you are just wasting everyone’s time and getting in the way.

Nicki Minaj Being Charmingly Blocked By Cell Phone Cameras

Other Photographers Part II - Some photographers are so obnoxious they need a second section. For some reason people with no photo pit experience decide they need to lift their cameras in the air to get a better shot. Doing this gets in everyone’s fucking way and ruins shots for everyone behind them. If you need to lift to get the shot do it from the back of the pit so you aren’t in anyone’s way. 90% of the time you are going to get a horribly composed shot anyway because you are just guessing wildly. When I see people do this I will grab their arms down because I don’t really respect them enough to ask nicely. Keep your fucking cameras at eye level. On this same point, almost every festival has a no flash rule so take your flash off your camera so it’s not in anyone’s way. Also, if you have a good place in the pit shoot a song there and move so someone else can get their shot. You want a variety of angels anyway, not just a shot right in front of the lead singer.

I Know You Love DFA 1979 But Keep Your Damn Camera Down!

Videographers – I have a lot of the same complaints with videographers as I do amateur photographers but the videographers are worse. They hold their cameras up in the air and look through their monitors and get in everyone’s way. Often they have fuzzy microphones or big lights attached to the top of their cameras and it ruins shot after shot of the photographers behind them. On top of that 99% they aren’t even supposed to be shooting video and if they get in my way I will rat those mother fuckers out so fast.

Not You Too Joel McHale! I Love You On Community!

Three Songs, No Flash – Three songs, no flash is the standard rule at most big concerts and festivals. Basically it means that the photographers get to be in the pit for three songs and they can’t shoot with flash. The flash part makes perfect sense as most concerts should be lit well enough that you don’t need one. Flashes get in the way of other photographers and they are distracting to performers. The three songs part completely sucks. I get the idea. You can easily shoot 100 photos in three songs and then you get the hell out of the fans way… the problem is that the first three songs are never the songs you want to shoot. I would take the last three songs every time. If you are dealing with a rap group some times the whole group won’t come out until half way through the set. You are never going to get a photo of a special guest performer or an amazing encore. Imagine if three songs and out was the rule in the 60s. No one would have ever caught Jimmy Hendrix setting his guitar on fire or the Who smashing their equipment. On top of that every photographer gets the same exact shots and they don’t capture the real essence of the performance. Plus you only get to hear three songs and then you move on to the next one. I have photographed so many bands multiple times but I couldn’t tell you anything about their set from the fourth song on.

My Only Decent Shot Of A$AP Rocky At Pitchfork Because He Came Out During Song Four

Photographing DJs – DJs are usually boring to shoot anyway but if you can’t shoot them from the stage you are just waisting your time anyway. Photographing a DJ from the photo pit is completely pointless because you can just see the top of their head over the table and their laptop. My favorite DJ’s to shoot put on a show and get away from their table. I will shoot Steve Aoki, Girl Talk or Major Lazer any day because they put on a better show than most bands, but for most DJ’s I don’t even bother. I just turn my camera away from them and shoot the crowd.

Steve Aoki Is One Of The Few DJs That Puts On A Show Worth Photographing

Bands Suck – One of the most over looked things about music fests is that most bands suck and a lot of the ones that don’t suck are really boring to photograph. If you are just going to stand there and play music you might as well stay home and just have someone play your CD for us. 75% of bands have terrible live shows and 75% of those make awful music anyway. If you are working for a festival for a client you often have to shoot band after band that you hate that you don’t even want to look at much less photograph.

Say What You Will About The Insane Clown Posse… At Least They Know How To Put On A Show

I am going to stop whining now. But If this article stops one 20 year old kid from agreeing to shoot photos with their brand new $400 digital SLR for free fo some mediocre music blog I will have done my job. In fact, I will make a promise to any music blogger right now. If I am covering a music festival I will let you run my images FOR FREE if you apply for a photo pass, get the pass and then don’t give it to anyone. One less photographer in the pit will be well worth it to me.

Now it should be said that if any photographer is coming to a music festival for the first time, or just wants some advice I am not here to give you shit. If you come to these things excited about photography and music and willing to listen to some of the pros in the pit we will welcome you with open arms. We all started because we loved this stuff and we respect young photographers with passion. We just need you to not make our jobs any harder than they already are.

I recommend to anyone just getting started in music photographer to check out the book Concert And Live Music Photography: Pro Tips From The Pit by J. Dennis Thomas. It has great tips on everything you would need to shoot music from equipment to post processing but most importantly it has a fantastic chapter on photo pit etiquette that everyone should have to read before they shoot a concert for the first time. It will go along way to helping you gain acceptance from pro photographers plus if you are ever in Austin J. Dennis Thomas WILL be in the photo pit with him, and he is a dude you do not want on your bad side.

My friends in the really fun band Great Tiger released a new EP with the producer Snakatak called “Wheelies Everywhere”. You can listen to it for free on Great Tiger’s band camp or download it for actual monies on iTunes. My friend Grier is one half of Great Tiger. I met him in like 2005 when he directed this amazing video for The Gaskets a band I was managing at the time. He presumably made this insane animated video from just stock photo images for the song “I Just Quit My Job”.  Watch this shit. It’s fucking wild.

Everyone keeps asking me if I am going back to the Gathering of the Juggalos and I still haven’t quite figured it out yet. I should probably know by next week but I really want to go. If anyone wants photos for your magazine or website or whatever let me know cause I want to go back but I gotta figure out how to pay for this shit. Getting out in the middle of no where is fucking expensive. Whoop Whoop my ninjas.

I feel like I have to explain this to people so often that I need to make a page for it so I can just send a link. I have no idea how people can be on Twitter for years and not figure this out, but at the same time I don’t know why Twitter doesn’t explain it better when you sign up.

If you start a Tweet with an @reply the only people who can see that are the people following both you and that person you are @ing. So for example if you Tweet “@drivenbyboredom is the greatest photographer and human to ever live” the only people who will see that Tweet in their Twitter stream are people who follow both you and me. Now if they go to your actual Twitter page they will see the Tweet but no one ever does that. They just look at their stream.

The reason Twitter does this is because no one wants to read their friends Tweeting back and forth with strangers. So if you are replying to your friend that I don’t know, then I don’t have to read it. But if I follow both of you then I am in on the conversation. But even if you aren’t replying to a Tweet Twitter doesn’t distinguish and so no @replies show up in feeds unless you follow both people.

So Don’t start a Tweet with an @ sign unless you are replying to someone. If you want to tell people how amazing I am you can start with a word like “So…” or “Hey…” or you can just put a period in front of it if you are out of characters. So you could do “So @drivenbyboredom is pretty much the best thing to happen to my life” or you could say “.@drivenbyboredom looks amazing naked!”  Either way everyone you follow will see it and they will thank you with money and oral sex because you introduced them to the greatest thing about Twitter… me.

Ernest Borgnine on the Bus from Jeff Krulik on Vimeo.

Ernest Borgnine died today at the age of 95. While most people might remember him from Poseidon Adventure or McHale’s Navy I will never forget him because of a film he made with Jeff Krulik called Ernest Borgnine On The Bus. I met Jeff Krulik years ago at a screening of a film he made called Hitler’s Hat. I told him I never received the copy of his classic Heavy Metal Parking Lot that I had ordered from him and he apologized and along with Heavy Metal Parking Lot he gave me a VHS tape that had pretty much every film he had made on it. One of those films was Ernest Borgnine On The Bus. It is a hilarious and amazingly interesting documentary that follows Borgnine on a cross country bus trip. It’s a great portrait of Borgnine and really worth watching today to celebrate the brilliant actors life. RIP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRAcpq92L8Q

As a general rule I don’t think British people are funny. I love Monty Python but I grew up on them and I am sure that if I didn’t see a Monty Python sketch until I was an adult I probably would have hated them. So when several years ago my friend tried to get me to listen to the Ricky Gervais podcast on a road trip I was really hesitant. I instantly fell in love with it, and not because of Gervais or his partner Steve Merchant, but because of their round headed producer Karl Pilkington. With the success of The Ricky Gervais show I think most people in the US are at least vaguely aware of Karl, but if you don’t you need to spend some time with man. He is both the dumbest and most brilliant human on Earth. On the podcast you get the idea that he could just be a character but Karl did two seasons of a travel show called An Idiot Abroad and you really get a much better sense of who Karl is. The show is brilliant and features Karl visiting some of the most amazing places on earth and absolutely hating it. 15 of the 16 episodes are available in their full length on YouTube.  Start watching, you will be amazed.

My friend Philippe Grenade is a weird dude, but this video he directed, stars in and wrote the music for has gotta be his weirdest move  yet… You really need to watch it all the way through. Although if mangina’s scare you maybe not…

My friend Rick runs Unseen Denver a street art blog in Colorado that uses all user submitted street art images to populate the site. It’s a pretty awesome thing and he has brought it to a bunch of cities including NYC. I actually helped him start Unseen NYC and any of my local fans should submit to that shit. Anyway Rick got interviewed by someone from a site called Craft Ninjas about how to make a stencil. So if you ever wanted to vandalize some shit without any artistic skill whatsoever here is the way to do it.

Just a personal tip… If you want to paint stencils on the sidewalk, cut your stencil into the bottom of a shopping bag, put your paint can inside and then bend down like you are reaching for something in the bag and paint away…

So no offense to Motion City Soundtrack but there are few things that offend me more than watered down punk rock. Pretty much the entire genres of pop punk and emo and everything associated with either offend me to the core.  That being said Motion City Soundtrack released a pretty fun video for their song True Romance and it features my friend and Burning Angel porn star Kleio Valentien in her underwear. It also is filmed backwards and seemingly in one take. I actually have to say it works better as a backwards video than Spike Jonze revolutionary Pharcyde “Drop” video but then again he did it first and Pharcyde are one of my favorite rap groups of all time. Whatever the case both videos are well worth watching.

This is the first of many changes that are going to be happening to Driven By Boredom over the next few months. I have been hinting at a site redesign for a long time and my hope is that it is actually on it’s way. I am supposed to have a new draft of the design in a few days and once it gets pretty close to where it needs to be we are going to start implementing it. That is going to be a huge process because it means reuploading 30+ gigs of photos one gallery at a time but once it’s done everything is going to work so much better.

One of the big new features to the site is what I am calling B-Sides. B-Sides is a separate blog that will show up on the main site right under the newest photo gallery and will feature a variety of content from site news and events to videos and music. It will give me a chance to update the site as often as I want without bumping important content down the page.  If I am out of town and don’t have time to get up full galleries I can still post my friends new music video or let you know about why the hell I haven’t updated. It’s going to lead to a lot more content and I am pretty excited about it.

I want to get people used to the B-Sides now so I will be posting on here a couple of times a week just to get a bit of content on this blog before the new page launches but once the site does launch you should see me updating this a lot more. I hope you guys are at least 15% as excited about this as I am. It should be fun.