2023 Miami Art Week

Two weeks ago I went to Miami for Art Basel/ Miami Art Week and a Dolphins game on Monday Night Football and the entire thing was a disaster so let’s break that down, post a handful of pictures and then let’s never speak of it again. Honestly I wouldn’t normally post any of this but I didn’t spend a bunch of time and money on this trip and come back with zero content, so here we go. Enjoy.

There have been a bunch of times in my life where I have gone to Miami with no plans and ended up having a great time, coming back with a ton of great photos and ultimately making some money. It’s been so consistent in my life that when I saw that Basel was happening the same week as a Monday Night Football game I was ready to book the trip and then figure it out later. Problem is I didn’t exactly know my dates. Ideally I would show up Friday and leave Tuesday morning but I had a new client who didn’t know the details of their event yet and so I couldn’t book the trip quite yet. Meanwhile I had a meeting with a second possible client who seemed to want me for a several day event and the only details we needed to work out was how long I was going to work for how much money. That gig started on Thursday afternoon so I finally confirmed my other client for Friday so I booked the trip, Thursday to Tuesday and got a non refundable hotel pretty close to one of the jobs because I am an idiot.

Shortly after I booked the trip my first client, the one that had confirmed all the details pulled out. Fortunately they gave me a kill fee that still pretty much paid for the trip but it went from being a money making trip to a break even one real quick. As we got closer and closer to the week it became clear that the second client had just ghosted me. I have no idea why or what happened but suddenly I was in Miami for four days with no jobs and nothing planned. I also happened to be busy as hell with a trip to NC for my girlfriend’s birthday, the big Dolfans NYC event I was throwing and then a trip to DC to see my folks since I missed Thanksgiving. Suddenly the Miami trip was on top of me and I had nothing planned. 

A few days before I left I went into panic mode, sending emails to old clients, friends I hadn’t seen in years an a bunch of models in Miami. Figured if nothing else I could do some photo shoots. I managed to plan two shoots, but wouldn’t you believe it, they both flaked. There was a third model who was visiting that I was trying to work something out with but that never happened either. Perfect.

On Thursday my flight was super early so when I finally got to my hotel they didn’t have a room ready for me so I just sort of sat in the lobby for far too long. I had barely slept so I tried to take a nap and after failing at that I ordered some food and started texting some friends. I got invited to the job that I didn’t get hired for and to a nightclub and to a dinner way too far from my hotel room. It was great to see I had stuff to do, but I just didn’t want to do any of it, and I had a long week so I just stayed in and watched a terrible football game. 

The next day I had a bunch of things I wanted to do. The first one was my buddy Deeze’s party. He had released a toy and some clothes with a Web3 company called Goonz and they were throwing a party. I went down there and had a good time. I met a few people I knew just on the internet and met some new folks and took a few 35mm photos. It was a very chill couple of hours and I had no idea it was going to end up the highlight of the trip. From there I went over to the legendary dive bar Mac’s Club Deuce for a bit and hit the always fantastic Sandwicherie which I hadn’t been to in years. And that’s where the trip peaked. I got stuck in such bad traffic that I just sort of gave up and went back to my hotel and eventually took an Uber over to Wynwood. I figured I would check out the new Graffiti Museum but it was closing when I got there so I ran into my buddy Sean and walked around with him for a bit and then stopped by the job that I got the kill fee for. I have no idea why I went but they invited me and I figured I should try and say hi. I wasn’t there long before I went to the Fool’s Gold party which I was also only at briefly because I am old and tired. 

On Saturday I had a bunch of stuff to do, and I managed to do almost none of it. It was so god damn frustrating dealing with Miami traffic that is so much worse than it was even a couple of years ago. It is so much worse than LA which is everyone’s favorite traffic to complain about. The one thing I did do was go see my friend Noah who had a piece of art in a gallery not too far from my hotel. When I got there, there was a pop up custom Miami Dolphins t-shirt event where they had graffiti artists designing shirts for you which I thought was cool and they told me the wait was 30 minutes so I figured why not. I was gonna go see my buddy Buff Monster talk on a panel at the Museum of Graffiti at six but it was only 4 so I had plenty of time. Two hours later I was still waiting and the sunk cost fallacy had broken me and I wasn’t leaving without a t-shirt I will absolutely never wear. I tried to go back to Wynwood to meet up with Buff even if he was speaking but traffic broke me and looking for a parking spot was absolutely hell and after 45 minutes in the car I just completely gave up and went back to my hotel and for the second of my three nights in Miami I just hung out in my hotel room.

By this time Basel was pretty much over and I hadn’t taken a single photo with my digital camera. I wanted to give you guys content so I figured the easiest thing to do would just be to once again go back to Wynwood and just take some photos of the murals there. It’s not the first time I have done exactly that. I don’t know why anyone would give a fuck about these photos, but it’s something and you get to look at them. I also finally went to the Grafitti Museum which was cool but way too small. So many important artists barely got a mention if they did at all. Once I got enough stuff I drove up to Delray Beach where my Dolfans NYC co-founder lives and watched the 1pm football games until it was time to meet up with her at an ice skating rink where her beer league team had a game. I watched some bad hockey in a freezing rink in a t-shirt and then accidentally went on a toll road on the way back to her place which cost me $45 because car rental places love to rip you off. After having dinner with her and her family the two of us went to Target and bought $700 of toys for needy children with some of the money we raised for charity this season. That was so much fun and honestly that was the actual highlight of the trip. It was so rewarding seeing all those toys piled up in the back seat of Michelle’s car, knowing so many kids would have a better Christmas because of our little fan club.

The next day I just hung out at Michelle’s house and did some work and then it was time for me to watch one of the most disappointing football games I have ever witnessed, and I have been to some bad ones.  The night started out well because we delivered all the toys to the toy drive and the people who ran the toy drive rolled out the red carpet for us and showed us around and hooked us up with food and drinks and all that. They hooked us up with some incredible seats as well. It was a great VIP experience all the way up until the game started. The Dolphins had one injury after another and were barely keeping up with a team that is much worse than them. A guy behind me puked and when someone washed the vomit up, the vomit water rolled under my seat for the rest of the game. Eventually the Dolphins made some big plays and were up two touchdowns with about two minutes to go. They then managed to somehow lose the game in embarrassing, humiliating fashion. 

When I finally made it back to Brooklyn I realized I had left my iPad and ear buds on the plane and no one ever found them. Just an absolutely cursed trip, but wait, there’s more! I had this idea that would wait until I got my 35mm film developed from the trip to do this post. That’s why this post wasn’t up a week ago. I finally dropped off all my film and in absolutely incredible fashion I got six rolls back and it just happens that two of the three rolls with Miami stuff on it didn’t really come out. Turns out the auto focus on my point and shoot seems to have broken at some point and 75% of the photos on those two rolls were a blurry mess (including my 35mm juggalo boat photos from the other night).

TLDR: I went to Miami, made no money, had a miserable time and managed to lose and iPad and break a camera. But hey, I have a few mediocre photos for you. Merry Christmas, I should be back with a big update before the end of the year.

Click here to see some 35mm photos from my trip to Miami.

Click here to see some digital photos of street art in Wynwood. 

Miami Art Week

I Don't Know Who Any Of These People Are

Miami Art Week

Miami Art Week

Miami Art Week

Comments (0)

Sailor Jerry Road Trip

It has been way too long since I have updated this site. I had big one planned announcing my new zine but life got in the way and then I had to leave town on this big trip that I am about to talk about. I figured I would have time to work on it on the road but I never did so I am just going to do a big update about it when it’s available for sale, but in the meantime you can preorder it here now! Now, let’s get in to what I have been doing the last two weeks…

I started taking photos for Sailor Jerry back in 2011 and they had were one of my best clients for nearly a decade, but then came the pandemic and my back injury and suddenly it had been about four years since I had worked for them. Fortunately we are once again working together. You may have already seen the trip I did with them to Sturgis Buffalo Chip, but now we are back with not one, but two music festivals, and a handful of stuff in between. In total I was on the road for twelve days, four in Louisville, KY for Bourbon & Beyond, three in Nashville and then four more days in Louisville for the Louder Than Life festival. It was a ton of work, but also a ton of fun. I am going to have separate posts about the two music festivals by themselves, but I wanted a post to give you a highlight of all the Sailor Jerry activations, which primarily included giving out Sailor Jerry flash tattoos.

The first festival, Bourbon & Beyond was an eclectic mix of music with other events centered around food and drink. The crowd was equally eclectic and we tattooed a TON of people. Tattooer Justin Smith was in town from Dallas, TX and cranked out some great tattoos all weekend. One of the highlights was that Bruno Mars was playing and my buddy Shaun is Bruno’s tour manager, so I got to hang out with him a bit and his girlfriend signed up for her first ever tattoo while he was off working. 

After B&B I jumped in my rental car and drove to Nashville where we had a series of small events mostly catered to people who work in the alcohol industry there. I spent the week hanging with bartenders and bar managers which are of course my kinda people after working in nightlife as long as I have. The first event we did was a collaboration with a clothing designer named Travis Austin who helped everyone customize their own hat that he is going to make for everyone. Now, I pretty much only wear baseball caps, but I got a chance to design one too and I am pretty excited to see how it turns out. Perhaps “Retirement Igor” can pull it off. I have a handful of photos in here from the bar stops we made at Honky Tonk Central and Tootsie’s and a couple from the Nashville Sounds baseball game we attended but those aren’t really very interesting photographically so I only posted a couple from each. The final event we did in Nashville was another tattoo event, this time for local bartenders. We had Bradley Delay tattooing who happened to be in town from Portland. He tattooed a bunch of bartenders and VIP and was still tattooing when I left to go eat lunch at an Aquarium themed restaurant in a mall. I should also mention that my girlfriend came to Nashville for a couple of days as well which was amazing. 

After that it was back to Louisville for Louder Than Life which was a kinda nostalgia festival, but one for bands that were huge when I was a kid so that’s perfect. I got to see Rancid and Weezer and a bunch of other bands I listened to as a teenager, but more on that in a future post. This post is about Sailor Jerry. The SJ booth seemed like the place to be at the second festival. We had local artist Christopher M. Waugh tattooing all weekend. We had a ton of media come by, a lot of cute goth girls and our friends The Bronx did a meet and greet there after their show. Brad from the Bronx is a friend of mine and Matt their frontman does the Sailor Jerry Podcast so it was cool to be able to do something with them. Oh, also my buddy Buff Monster was there all weekend because his long time girlfriend is my SJ boss! The festival was a lot of fun and I shot a bunch of the bands so be on the lookout for that post. 

Okay, that’s it for now, but I will be back soon with seperate updates for Bourbon & Beyond and Louder Than Life. I also have a couple other shoots coming soon and more info about my new zine so maybe check back more often than normal for a couple weeks. See you guys soon!

Now click here to see some highlights from my Sailor Jerry road trip!

Sailor Jerry Tattoos

Sailor Jerry @ Bourbon & Beyond

True Love

Travis Austin

Tattoo Event In Nashville

It's A Party

Matt From The Bronx

Sailor Jerry @ Louder Than Life

Sailor Jerry @ Louder Than Life

 

Comments (0)

Introducing Rosie Jones

Jade Baker was one of my absolutely favorite models to photograph. I say was because she is no longer Jade Baker, she has rebranded and is now going by Rosie Jones. As someone who has had the same online identity since 2001, I totally get it. Clearly I am not the same person I was 20 something years ago and I know that Rosie is a much different person from who she was when Jade Baker was born. 

Rosie was visiting NYC and decided to book the room Dylan Thomas was living in when he died at the infamous Chelsea Hotel. Weirdly enough I had never taken photos at the Chelsea and obviously I couldn’t pass the opportunity to shoot there or to photograph Rosie so of course we made it happen. The balcony of the roof has a great view of the sign so most of the shots we took out there. Honestly I took so many of nearly the exact same photo of her on the balcony. I just wanted to nail it and I think I did. We shot it in her bra, topless, nude, during the day and at night. We shot some stuff in the actual room as well, but clearly it’s not quite as fun as that incredible balcony. I’m sure we were spotted by people outside, but it’s the Chelsea, I am sure that kinda thing is expected. 

After the shoot I went home and pulled all my favorites from the digital photos and was pretty much ready to post but I wanted to wait for Jade to become Rosie so I held off for a while. Before she made the announcement I got the 35mm photos we shot back and I was so psyched about them. The daylight flash looked great, the flash stuff in the hotel looked great, the low light stuff as the sun went down looked great and we even got a few decent black and white shots. They just blew away the digital photos and there was more than 50 of them so guess what, you guys get the 35mm shoot instead of the digitals. It had to be done. Eventually I will probably post the digital stuff, but it’s just not as good so who knows when that will be. 

I should mention once again, that my new nude stuff is paywalled because frankly I can’t afford to fix my broken website and I haven’t found a better solution than using Flickr for my galleries. One of these days I will figure out a better solution but for now just give me a few dollars and you will have access to nearly ever nude I have ever taken… on and there’s also some BTS video from this shoot on my OnlyFans. Just saying.

Now click here to see all the 35mm photos of Rosie Jones at the Chelsea Hotel!

Jade Baker Is Rosie Jones

Jade Baker Is Rosie Jones

Jade Baker Is Rosie Jones

Comments (0)

New Unrealized Project Zines

Back in 2016 I released Unrealized Projects, a set of black and white photocopied zines that were a little bit of a departure from the full color highly produced zines and books I had been doing up until that point. The New York Art Book Fair was coming up and I wanted something a little rougher around the edges and get back to my roots of doing black and white punk zines when I was in high school. The idea was to take some projects I had in mind that never really made it and make them into shorter zines and package them all together as part of a limited edition run. I was really happy with how they turned out.

Earlier this year I had some big plans for some color zines that I wanted to put out and I had started working on a Kickstarter to fund them and was all ready to launch but I had to film a video for it. I started working on it on my trip to LA in late January but I never finished it and I kept putting it off… and then coronavirus hit. I didn’t think I should be doing a Kickstarter when millions of people were out of work. A few months later the Black Lives Matter protests exploded and suddenly my ideas for zines just felt so pointless and I decided I wanted to something very slightly more meaningful.

During the quarantine I would still bring my camera with me every time I left the house to get groceries or whatever and I started documenting all the signs on shop windows about Covid. I just thought it was important to have a record of that stuff for myself. Once the protests started I was documenting as well. I also started shooting all the street art that came out of both events and decided maybe I could put all that stuff together and make something. That’s when I realized it was time for an Unrealized Projects Part 2.

The new edition is three more black and white photo copied zines, plus an insert that features a photograph on one side and information about the zines on the back. The insert is also signed and numbered out of just 50 copies. All four items are packaged together in an envelope with a sticker. Oh, did I mention it’s all just $15? It’s a pretty cool package. 

The three zines are as follows:

Sign Of The Times: This is the zine I described above which features a collection of images of litteral signs. Signs about Covid, graffiti/ street art and of course protest signs. A lot of these are just snapshots, but there are some nice portraits and things in there as well.

Mirror Mirror: This zine is a collection of nudes that I have shot using mirrors. Any time I am shooting in a place with mirrors I try to use them in shots. It’s honestly just an easy way to get a more interesting composition. I shoot a lot of behind the scenes stuff when I am shooting as well and girls doing their makeup in front of mirrors makes for good shots as well. Plus if one of these zines didn’t have nudity in it, most of you wouldn’t buy it. I know what you want.

We Are The Champions: This one is just for me (and maybe some of my friends), but I wanted to do something with all the photos I had from the 2018 Washington Capitals Stanley Cup winning championship season. I watch hockey with a bunch of people called the NYC Caps Crew and we do these huge watch parties during the playoffs and I took a ton of photos of us celebrating. After the Caps won I went to DC for the parade so it includes photos from that as well. It also includes other photos from meet ups through the year as well as the time I got to meet a couple of the players backstage at Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, and the back cover had to be my Stanley Cup tattoo. I realize you guys probably don’t care about this one but it means a lot to me and there are some fun photos in it, so you are just gonna have to deal with it.

To convince you guys to pick up the zines I have uploaded two galleries of images from the zines. The first one is about 80% of the nudes in Mirror Mirror. You can see those exclusively on Girls of DBB. The second gallery is 5 images from each zine you can check out all of those for free here!

And now, finally please click here to buy Unrealized Projects Volumes 4-6!

Sign Of The Times

Mirror Mirror

We Are The Champions

Comments (0)

2004 RNC, Punk Rock & Other Old Images

I am leaving NYC tomorrow for the first time in January. I honestly am the most excited about any vacation I have ever been on despite the fact that I am not really taking a vacation from anything but sitting on my couch watching 8 hours of Netflix a day. I am just kinda losing my mind. Because of this trip I have been quarantining so I can hide out in Delaware with some friends from childhood and see my parents who retired there. That’s why I spent last night watching the fucking Republican National Convention instead of out taking photos of the protests for the attempted execution of Jacob Blake. But watching the RNC gave me an idea for an update before I left town that has (almost) no nudity in it.

When quarantine first happened I had this idea of being productive and trying to better my life, which I obviously gave up on, but one of the things I did was buy a negative scanner and start scanning a bunch of old 35mm negatives I found in a box. It was a range of eras of photos, but pretty much high school and college. I think the earliest stuff is from the mid 90’s and the latest stuff is photos from the 2004 RNC when it was in New York. I wouldn’t move to the city for two more years but I was managing a band at the time and we booked a show in New York so we could join the protests. The photos aren’t very good, and the scans are worse, but it is very cool to see photos of Union Square before I even knew what Union Square was. 

After a couple of hours of scanning I realized that the scans were pretty garbage and gave up. I probably shouldn’t have bought a negative scanner for $100. I posted a few of the images to Twitter and then moved on with my life. But the RNC reminded me I had this folder on my desktop and I figured this would be a good post before I skipped town for a week. So let’s break down what you are looking at… 

The first group of photos I didn’t even actually take. I started a punk record label when I was in high school and our first, and by far most successful release was a 7″ compilation of DC punk bands called Raise The Flag harDCore Volume 1. Someone actually uploaded it to YouTube if you want to hear it. I was only 15 when we put the record together. Raise The Flag 2 was in the production stages when my business partner’s car broke down. Without telling me he spent all the money we had for the record on fixing his car. That ended the label and our friendship. (We did actually reconnect in college and are still close friends. Check out his new band!) These photos are from the Raise The Flag 2 cover art photo shoot. I am not sure who took these photos or why I didn’t do it. The whole reason I picked up a camera in the first place was to shoot DC punk bands but I guess I wanted to be in it. The actual label of the record was going to be a photo of me wearing only a DC flag so I sort of spun around while you listened to the album. Oh, all these photos were taken at the very steep stairs made famous by the movie the Exorcist

Up next in the gallery is the RNC protest photos, the only stuff color in the group, followed by some of the earliest nudes I ever shot. I had an assignment in college to shoot something with infrared film. For some reason it makes veins look really pronounced so I shot some nudes of a friend of mine and I think somewhere I still have the prints of these that I made for the assignment and they actually look pretty cool. An old Polaroid I took of her is actually on the inside cover my Instaxxx book and might actually predate these photos by a few months. 

The next photo is of this band the Infertil that were on that first Raise The Flag album. They ended up getting in a fight during their set and their drummer jumped over his drum set and into the crowd. I didn’t want to stop taking photos, but obviously I wasn’t gonna let fellow AV PUNX crew members get fucked with, so I am actually kicking someone at the same exact time as I am taking this photo. It was the first, but not the last time I had to fight with a camera in my hand. Twenty years later that same drummer actually ended up playing drums for my old band Fucking Bullshit. After that we have some photos from the Rolling Thunder bike rally in DC. I believe these photos are from the 2000 rally. And then there is a single photo from a WWF Monday Night Raw taping I went to in college.

From there there is a mix of band photos and protest photos (Edit: I realized after I posted this that there’s only one protest shot here. There were more scans but I guess I didn’t include them in the gallery) which is pretty much 99% of what I shot in high school. We  got a Leonard Peltier protest, photos of Rancid, Motörhead and Nashville Pussy, plus some shots of my friend Crazy Willy and a single self portrait! Check 16 year old me out! The gallery ends with some photos from Warped Tour 2002. These photos were actually on a CD I found in the box with the negatives. I covered Warped Tour ’98 for the zine I ran in high school and I think I went in ’97 too, but I got invited in 2002 by a girl I worked with at Ben & Jerry’s. I didn’t really want to go, but I did want to hang out with her so I requested a press pass so that I could at least shoot some bands at the same time. The CD had shots of the Casualties, Bad Religion and NOFX, but the BR & NOFX photos sucked, probably because I don’t like pop punk. I shot digital photos of these too and some of those are better but the camera was such garbage that they aren’t really worth looking at.

Okay, this is a weirdly long post for some shitty scans of some decades old photos. I still need to plug the shit that is paying my rent right now. If you like 35mm work you can check out my latest gallery on Girls of DBB which is all the NSFW 35mm stuff I have shot since February. I also uploaded a 3 minute compilation of old Vines from when nudity was allowed on Vine. You can buy that whole clip for $5, or you can see the three parts that make up that longer video on my OnlyFans. You can get access to everything on my OnlyFans for $5 so that seems like the better value, but you gotta make your own decisions. Oh, and speaking of OnlyFans I queued up posts for the next week so while I am on vacation you will continue to get content. Gonna try to find a gallery for Girls of DBB to upload when I am gone as well.

Now, if you wanna see all the old 35mm photos, click here!

2004 RNC Protest

 Nashville Pussy

Rolling Thunder 2000

Raise The Flag

Motorhead

Comments (0)

Three Girls Of DBB Exclusive Photo Shoots

With the end of the world at hand more people are turning to naked internet stuff to make a living and I have several friends that have started OnlyFans accounts to make a living (Mine is coming soon… like this week soon…). Fortunately for you guys that means that you get to see some old shoots I had never published before. Unfortunately for you guys it also means you need to spend some money to see them. I have recently uploaded three shoots that are exclusive to my paysite Girls of Driven By Boredom, for a couple of different reasons. 

First up we have the oldest shoot. I shot a bunch of 35mm photos of my friend Tine, aka Tine Dream, way back in 2011 on a road trip across country. Aside from my zine NOT SAFE and my book Instaxxx none of the NSFW stuff had ever been published. Fast forward to 2020 and Tine is not only doing her OnlyFans but she also wants to start doing actual adult work when this is all over. I, for one, am psyched about. 

Tine Dream

Next up is my friend Eddy. I have shot her before, but only implied nude stuff. Again, the only actual topless stuff we had shot was in the “Mini” edition of Instaxxx. But we did a photo shoot shortly after the fires in California had kicked her out of her home in Malibu. She was sleeping on couches and we had this idea that we would do a shoot to raise money to help the wildfire recovery. Unfortunately we never got around to actually figuring out a good way to do that and since we are both broke right now the charity we are raising money for is ourselves. This shoot is exclusive to my site Girls of Driven By Boredom AND her OnlyFans. She is keeping her OF user name on the downlow though, so you need to follow her on Instagram and DM her to get that info. We shot these photos at her friend Michelle’s shop Spacedust in LA so check them out, they are selling some cool masks during this nightmare.

Eddy

Lastly we have sort of the opposite situation with Natalie. I was introduced to her by my good friend Carter Cruise who is her roommate. Carter was DJing in Vegas and I went over to their hotel room and took some photos of Nat (and a few of Carter) during AVN Week. I feel like we really hit it off and took a ton of great stuff. I particularly loved the 35mm stuff we shot. Natalie asked me not to post any of the NSFW stuff publicly because she has no idea where she will be career wise after this whole pandemic thing is over and I totally get that. I can’t tell you how many times I have taken down photos because of someone’s work. Always happy to do it, I don’t ever want my photos to fuck up anyone’s life. So yeah, if you want to see all the photos of Natalie there is only one place to see them. But she is so fucking cool and photogenic so I hope I get to take a lot more photos of her when this is all over.

Natalie

 

 

Comments (0)

Sammy In The Neighborhood

I love taking photos of my friend Sammy. She lives less than two blocks from me and she will text me in the middle of the night about taking photos and we just walk around shooting stuff in public. One of the first shoots we ever did was pretty much the same thing back in 2013 before we were even neighbors and now it’s a regular occurrence. 

As I was trying to think of something to update the site with before I left town for the holidays I thought of Sammy. I had a few mini shoots of her that I had never published as well as a bunch of 35mm photos. I also had some photos of her in the snow on a rooftop that I put on Girls of Driven By Boredom, but never on here. I figured I could mash them all together and make a good gallery for you guys. Literally an hour after I pulled all the photos, Sammy hit me up and asked me to photograph her in this crazy latex mask she bought. I told her about my public nudity mash up gallery plan and said this would be perfect for it, so at 1am we left the house and took some very weird photos. Even when she had clothes on we got a lot of funny looks walking around.

Before I finish this post I should mention that I am leaving town tomorrow, headed to Miami for 24 hours and then on to DC for the holidays. If you ordered anything from my shop it’s going out tomorrow, including the Vacation Photos Album which I am about to spend the rest of the night assembling. If you order anything by noon it will ship tomorrow afternoon, but anything later than that ships after Christmas. Shop now, motherfuckers.

Lastly, I should plug Girls of Driven By Boredom on here. I pulled a few photos from each shoot specifically to save for the app, so there’s something like 20 extra photos on there. The roof photos were already up on there as their own bonus gallery, and as always the photos were up early and in high resolution. So just sign up, it’s like $2 a month if you sign up  for a year which is way less than a subscription to the New York Times and has way more nudity. It makes also makes a great Christmas present for a pervert. Your uncle will thank you.

Now click here to see a bunch of photos of Sammy naked (and also not so naked) in public.

Sammy

Sammy

Sammy

Sammy

Sammy

 

Comments (0)

New Project: Vacation Photos Album

More than a month ago I had this idea. I wanted to go to Vegas to photograph a few models there and I couldn’t really afford the trip. I remembered a few years ago I made this “What Happens in Vegas” photo album to pay for a trip to Vegas and I thought maybe I should do a second edition of it. And then I started thinking about other ideas and I ended up with the idea of doing a “Vacation Photos” photo album, but we will get to that in a second. I organized a good edit of photos, put it for sale in my Etsy store, and was getting ready to release it when my life fell apart. If you don’t want to be guilt tripped into buying stuff, feel free to skip a paragraph. 

First my website got hacked and I was dealing with that for weeks. People suggested I should do a GoFundMe to pay for fixing it, but I always want people to get more than they pay for, even when just trying to support my work, and so I figured this Vacation Album would be a perfect way to pay for my website fees, so the project was still a go, and maybe I could just go to AVN in January a few days early. I was all ready to post about this when my roommate died. Aside from the trauma and depression from all of that I currently don’t have a roommate and the place is nowhere near ready to show. All her stuff is still here. Long story short, is that for all the people who wanted to help out with my website being fucked, or help with my other horrible situation, this is your chance. This album is fairly expensive, but buying anything from my store right now (or signing up for Girls of DBB) would help a lot. 

Anyway, let’s talk about the “Vacation Photos” album. The album will be an actual old school photo album, one of the cheap corny looking ones that you would get at a 1 Hour Photo lab. I bought 10 of them already and they are a mix of different colors so each color will be super rare. Each album will contain 64 actual 4″x6″ prints of my 35mm road trip work. It will be a good mix of nudity and roadside attractions and landscapes. The idea is that you would put it on your coffee table and people would pick it up thinking it’s an actual photo album from a vacation, only it will have a bunch of porn stars getting naked in public in it. Each album will be hand titled and signed on the inside back cover. There will be a VERY limited number of these. The Vegas album ended up being an edition of only 15 and my plan is to do 10 of these unless I sell a bunch this week, but at $150 each I cannot imagine I am going to sell a ton. But they make one hell of an Xmas present. Oh, and they come with a free postcard!

Speaking of Christmas, my plan was to get these to people before Christmas and I am still going to try but it somewhat depends on my photo lab. I am going to finish the edit this weekend and send them to print Monday, so hopefully they will all go out on the 20th, but if not I will ship them on the 30th when I get back from seeing my family for the holidays.

Below I am going to post some examples of the type of photos you will see in this photo album, but keep in mind this isn’t the final edit. I would imagine most of these will make it in the album, but I haven’t made any decisions yet. There are a few more on Girls of DBB too. 

So click here to buy a copy of Vacation Photos.

And click here to see a gallery of examples of photos that will end up in my Vacation Photos album.

Kimberly Kane

Charlotte Stokely

Graceland

Dana DeArmond

April O'Neil

 

 

Comments (0)

Saying Goodbye To Alex Magnetic

11 years ago I met Alex “Magnetic” at a party in the Lower East Side. My friend Justin introduced me to her and I thought she has the coolest eyes I had ever seen. I got her number at that party and she was in my phone as “Alex Eyes” for years. We went on a single date that didn’t go anywhere but we were friends for over a decade.

When she first moved to LA from NYC we kept in touch. When she came back to town she was always one of the first people I would photograph when I walked into a nightclub. When she moved back home to Ohio after leaving Columbia we still talked all the time. I had a layover in Detroit and she came all the way there just to have lunch with me before taking me back to the airport. When her parents worried about her visiting NYC again I let her stay on my couch and made sure she was sober the whole time. She was briefly my intern and was the best one I ever had. When she moved to LA in 2016 I flew to meet her and drove with her, showing her all my favorite things on Route 66. 

So when she needed a place to stay when she was looking for work in NYC back in January I of course let her stay with me. She got the first job she applied to and moved in full time. She got back into nightlife quickly and was partying a lot, but she also was killing it at work and was in bed early every night she wasn’t working. She had taken up kickboxing for a while and we were both trying to encourage each other to eat healthy and I honestly thought she was doing great. 

When she would complain to me about the shitty dudes she was dating or the nightlife drama I felt like it was 10 years all over again when I was telling her she should be paying more attention to school than this nightlife bullshit. I have met a lot of people in nightlife over the years but very few of them were as obviously as brilliant as Alex. She wanted to a writer but she also wanted to be Edie Sedgwick and really live this crazy life before she could write about it.

I found myself having this same conversation with her the night before she died. She seemed manic and troubled, worried about some drama with her love life and what she was doing in life and her mental health. We sat on the floor of our kitchen for hours just talking about her life. We talked about how this nightlife shit didn’t matter and how smart she was and how we were going to try and find her a therapist on Monday. She eventually calmed down and I put her in bed and got her kindle for her. She was going to read before bed. I hugged her goodnight and told her we would figure everything out.

The next day I woke up and saw she had made some food. I didn’t hear her in her room so I figured she was out doing something. I went out to watch football, but I checked her Instagram a few times because I was worried about her and hoping she would post a story like she did every day so I would know she was alright. 

When I got home I didn’t immediately check on her. I was in a bad mood from the football game and starving. Nothing had been moved in the kitchen and I still didn’t hear anything coming from her room so I assumed she was still out. I ordered some pizza and was just finishing it when I got a message from one of her friends asking if they had seen her. My heart sank. I just had this horrible feeling. Immediately stopped what I was doing and knocked on her door. I didn’t hear anything and I opened it and found her. I could tell instantly she was gone.

The next five hours were some of the worst of my life. 17 different people came into my home and asked me the same questions over and over again. It felt like a dream. By midnight I was alone, in my home of 13 years, feeling like I didn’t belong there for the first time in my life. 10 days later I still feel my stomach drop every time I walk into the kitchen. It still doesn’t feel real. 

Alex died of what appears to be an accidental opiate overdose. From what I hear from her friends she hadn’t touched the stuff since she went to rehab for it 10 years ago. Just one slip up ended her life. Addiction and depression are both diseases. They are trying to kill you just like cancer does except no one ever stigmatizes you for getting chemo or tries to get you to have just one more tumor before you go home. And boy do they ever like to work together. 

I have lost way too many friends to addiction and mental illness, and I have written way too many of these posts. Alex was so brilliant and beautiful and fun and she could have done anything she wanted if she could have just somehow figured out how to get it all together. But her dad told me something that I try to remember every day. Drugs almost killed her 10 years ago, and we should be so grateful to have Alex for as long as we did. I am so glad to have known her and I am so happy to have so many good memories with her and before I end this post I want to leave you with one of my favorites.

When Alex was moving to LA in 2016 I had plans to be out there already so I told her I would meet her in Detroit and we could drive together. I drove Route 66 as part of my first book and I had always wanted to do it again. We had such an amazing time. We stayed in a giant teepee at the WigWam Motel, we fed burros in Arizona, she rooted me on when I ate a 72oz steak at the Big Texan in Amarillo, and we comforted each other in Oklahoma City when Trump won the election. It was such an amazing trip and I am so fucking thankful I got to spend it with Alex. I am so thankful I got to spend that last night with her. Alex was one of my favorite people of all time and I am so fucking thankful I had her in my life at all.

I went through all the 35mm photos I took on our road trip and want to share them with you all. We took a few nude photos in the middle of the desert in Arizona and in the Texas panhandle and I know she loved those photos but I also feel a little weird posting those now. One of those photos is my favorite I have ever taken of her though, so I took it and two others and put them at the very end of this gallery so that if her friends and family see this they can just avoid the last three photos in this gallery. 

Alex, I love you and I miss you. 

Click here to see 35mm photos from my Route 66 road trip with Alex Magnetic. 

Alex

Alex

Alex

Alex

Alex

Comments (4)

Next Page »