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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Elizabeth Warren In NYC – 9.16.19

Monday night I photographed Elizabeth Warren’s rally at Washington Square park for Gothamist. You should go over there and read the article and look at my pictures. I took a ton of photos that they didn’t post so I figured I would do my own update with the outtakes as well. 

I also felt like I should take this time to talk a little bit about why I am supporting Elizabeth Warren for president. I ended up pitching this to Gothamist specifically because I wanted to go hear her speak. I actually think she’s very inspiring and the more I listen to her the more I like her. The last time I endorsed a political candidate in a primary was Obama in 2008 and I went back today and read it. He is a little more centrist than I am but I thought his ability to inspire people really important. Elizabeth Warren is no Obama in that regard but her anti-corruption and corporate greed message is something I can’t help but get excited about. That message is why I voted for Bernie in 2016, but Elizabeth Warren delivers that message with a lot more positivity and hope. 

As a progressive the only real options for me are Bernie and Warren. I mean I am certainly not voting for Bill de Blasio and I wish he would get back to work running our city. Castro I like but I don’t really think he has a chance. Cory Booker is a little moderate for me, but he seems like a very genuine person and I would be all in if he somehow won the nomination. If I didn’t know anything about Kamala Harris going into the debates she might be one of my favorite candidates, but I find it very hard to vote for a prosecutor. It’s the same reason I wouldn’t vote for Amy Klobuchar, that and because she’s a centrist who opposes medicare for all and her only argument for being president seems to be that she could maybe peel off some Trump voters. Speaking of mediocre centrists, Joe Biden is like Klobuchar except a man whose brain is melting in front of us. Biden offers no plan for America, just a platform that he’s an old white man who knows Obama. Buttigieg and Beto are both too moderate for me, but at least they are young and kind of interesting. I wish Beto ran for senate again, but at least Texas has a good candidate in MJ Hegar (give her money). I am not going to go through everyone else, but I will say I think the idea of Universal Basic Income is an interesting one and I am glad Yang is bringing attention to it. So it all comes down to Bernie and Warren, and I don’t even want to tell you my problems with Bernie because some zealot will start yelling at me on Twitter because his supporters are by far the worst thing about him. You are not helping your case by screaming at strangers on the internet, bro.

I would talk more about Warren’s speech the other night because it was really great, but you should just read about it on Gothamist. There was also this great WaPo editorial about it that I would recommend as well. Now let’s look at some photos from her rally. 

Click here to donate to Elizabeth Warren for President.

Click here to see all my photos from the Elizabeth Warren rally at Washington Square Park.

Elizabeth Warren For President

Elizabeth Warren For President

Elizabeth Warren For President

Elizabeth Warren For President

Elizabeth Warren For President

 

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Isle Of Dogs Portraits

I’ve had some amazing opportunities presented to me over the last decade of my professional photography career, but without a doubt the best gig of my life happened last Wednesday. I reached out to my friend Sarah who is the director of national publicity for Fox Searchlight to see if she could get me into a press junket or something because I am working on my first portfolio in years and I wanted some newer celebrity portraiture. I thought she was kindly blowing me off when said “I’ll let you know if I can think of anything” but then a week or two later she texted me “Would you want to shoot the cast of the new Wes Anderson movie holding rescue puppies?” and suddenly I had the best job any photographer has ever had.

In the end we ended up doing two completely different photo shoots at the same time time. Best Friends Animal Society met us at the dog friendly Peninsula Hotel where we had two rooms set up. One for the puppies and one for the photo shoots. I don’t usually use lights, but I bought some cheap LED video lights because I knew we had a ton of setups and I basically had to build photo booths for the puppies.

The first shoot was dressing up puppies in Wes Anderson costumes. We knew this was going to be really tricky so we had some ringers. Fox Searchlight organized a group of six “Instagram famous” pups that we knew would be able to pose well with costumes on. The rescue pups would be much trickier. I spent the morning trying to get these adorable rescue puppies to sit still long enough to get a shot of them in these two little puppy photo booths I set up. Luckily I had the help of the Best Friends volunteers, my assistant Steph and Sarah’s boyfriend Snake (don’t ask). We found that the puppers wouldn’t eat their costumes if they were already eating treats so Steph and Mike kept the pups distracted with food while I kept shooting.

Later in the afternoon the rockstar dogs showed up. They were so happy to be in these costumes and they would just sit there posing for photos. It was so incredibly easy to get them to pose, especially after dealing with wild puppies all morning. We had Quincy Fox dressed up as Fantastic Mr. Fox, Mad Max Fluffyroad dressed as up as Max Fischer from Rushmore, Muppet’s Revenge as Steve Zissou from Life Aquatic, Menswear Dog as Richie Tenenbaum, and Walter Cronkite & Iverson the Labradoodle dressed up as Monsieur Gustave & Madame Céline from Grand Budapest Hotel. Plus Sarah’s dog Cricket Jean got to play Chas Tenenbaum and his kids with a couple tiny rescue pups. All of this was so goddamn adorable and they were so easy to shoot until we did a group shot. All the dogs have different commands to get them to sit still and suddenly it was chaos, but we managed to pull it off somehow.

While we were doing all the doggy dress up I was taking breaks to shoot the Isle of Dogs cast whenever they were ready. I had several shots planned by the windows of the hotel room, knowing that I wouldn’t need lights for those. Liev Schreiber and and Bob Balaban came in and we knocked their shoots out in under five minutes each. I might not be the greatest portrait photographer on earth, but I am very good at getting something usable, very, very quickly.

Jeff Goldblum showed up earlier than planned so I photographed him by one of the windows as well. I had another shot planned for him but shooting him was incredibly easy. He was every bit as Jeff Goldblum as one would expect and sang to the puppy the entire time. I actually got a video of him singing and I have been sending it to my friends all week because it’s so good. Go watch it.

After that I had to switch to my lighting set ups again. I actually shot my favorite Law & Order ADA Courtney B. Vance in one of the dog photo booth set ups. We just raised the lights and we were good to go. The only shot I didn’t have planned out was for the Isle of Dogs human star, Koyu Rankin. I decided I would just figure out when he showed up because he’s 10 and all 10 year old’s love puppies. I was right and I just shot him in this random chair in the room and the only reason it took more than three minutes is because he wanted to play with the puppies so I just kept shooting.

Finally we moved up to the hotel bar. It was the best lit room in the entire hotel and I knew it would be the perfect place to shoot Wes Anderson with his c0-writers Jason Schwartzman and Kunichi Nomura. Wes just wanted to do the group shot and I knew I could shoot all three of them without any lights on this couch right by the window. What I didn’t really consider was how hard it was going to be to get three people and three puppies to pose for a photo. I ended up getting some useable shots but this was the only one I wasn’t really happy about. I also used the same couch to shoot all the Instagram dogs together which I thought would make for a funny Easter egg for anyone who saw both shoots.

All I can say about shooting Tilda Swinton is that she is the most unreal looking person I’ve ever met. I saw her walking down the street a few years ago and she was like this glowing space alien. She is so stunning looking that she had no choice in life but to be famous. She plays a pug in Isle of Dogs and one of the Fox Searchlight crew has an adorable pug named Elvira so we had to shoot them together. The difference in skin (fur?) tone between Tilda & Elvira was so drastic, but it ended out working perfectly and I kinda want to make this photo into a greeting card or something.

When I first saw the bar on the roof of the Peninsula Hotel I saw it I knew I wanted to shoot Bill Murray sitting there with a puppy next to him drinking out of a bowl. Unfortunately all the bowls we had were way too big so he ended up with a shot glass of water. Bill Murray was one of the first big celebrity portraits of my career. I had shot plenty of celebrities before but it was mostly out at parties so when I shot him with Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek back in 2010 for their movie Get Low it was the first time I had ever really been star struck at a shoot. This time I was too stressed out about the shoot to be nervous but Bill Murray easily the greatest person who ever lived. I asked Sarah to clear the room because everyone was in the shot at the back of the bar, and she was trying her best, but Bill decided he would get shit done. He just started screaming at everyone to get out as if he was this petulant star like that famous Christian Bale rant, but he was completely joking about it. Still, it worked and I had an empty background to shoot him and the puppy. Every second of shooting him was entertaining and we got probably the greatest photo I have ever taken.

Anyway, this is a crazy long update, but it was my favorite shoot of all time so what are you gonna do. I just wanted to thank Sarah and everyone from Fox Searchlight for trusting me enough to do this thing. Thanks to Steph and Snake for help on the job and of course thanks to Best Friends for providing all the rescue pups. I have actually photographed a benefit for Best Friends before and I hope I can work with them again.

Now here’s the result of all the hard work:

Click here to see the Isle of Dogs cast portraits on Vulture.

Click here to see the puppies in Wes Anderson costumes on Buzz Feed.

And click here to see a bunch of outtakes from both shoots plus a handful of red carpet photos from the dog friendly Paw Prints screening of Isle of Dogs at IFC Center that happened right after the shoot.

Jeff Goldblum

Maxine As Max Fischer

Tilda Swinton

Cricket As Chaz Tenenbaum

Courtney B. Vance

Menswear Dog As Richie Tenenbaum

Bill Murray

Moonrise Kingdog

Bob Balaban Wes Anderson Dogs

Jason Schwartzman, Wes Anderson & Kunichi Nomura

 

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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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And Now The Rest Of The 2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos…

Okay! This is it! The final 2016 Gathering of the Juggalos post and now I can go on vacation! Because I was just trying to figure out how to get these up as fast as possible this gallery is massive. This gallery has over 400 images and I am gonna scroll through them now and see if I see anything worth talking about. Let’s go!

Most of these are just random crowd shots and juggalo portraits that didn’t make it into any of the other galleries. I shot a lot of face paint and tattoos and signs for Noisey and the LA Weekly (links below) so there’s a lot of that stuff in here. Can you spot the selfie these girls made me take with them? There’s a bunch of Wolfpac and Busey Beauty stuff in here so lot’s of eye candy if you are creepy like that. There are some party photos in here too from the late night party tents they have set up. Also these images are all in order so you will get to night time photos and when day time photos hit again that’s the next day. That’s probably common sense but whatever.

Day three and day four have some juggalo fight club stuff in it. I have been covering that for years but it didn’t really deserve it’s own post this year. Sadly one of my favorite juggalos, Nebraska Warrior, finally lost his title to a wrestler named Strychnine which I assume he spells incorrectly cause that’s a real juggalo thing to do. It was a good match though. There are a bunch of photos from Miss Juggalette which I shot for the LA Weekly. It’s just girls standing on stage but there was a nice moment when the winner talked about her social anxiety and how she just entered to help get over her fear. Everyone started crying and hugged her. I was rooting for her because she did a Jessica Rabbit performance and was also not wearing underwear.

Anyway that’s kinda it. Lemme just throw up the links to all my coverage down here so I can come back to this later to see everything if I need to find it and you can lurk it as well if you haven’t already.

Driven By Boredom Coverage:

LA Weekly Coverage:

Noisey Coverage:

Chicagoist Coverage:

And now finally click here to see the rest of the photos from the 2016 Gathering of the Juggalos!

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

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Ford Models For Teen Vogue

I try to be a fairly diverse photographer. I like shooting stuff people don’t expect from me. I like that my resume features both Penthouse and the Library Journal. I like that I have covered Antiques Roadshow and the Gathering of the Juggalos. I like that I have shot portraits of Oscar winners and AVN winners. So when Ford Models asked me to shoot some photos for a Teen Vogue piece they were working on I jumped at the chance.

I showed up at the Waldorf Astoria to basically shoot behind the scenes photos for a video Ford was working on for Teen Vogue. The concept was what models do the night before New York Fashion Week and basically I got to photograph a bunch of Ford Models having a slumber party. The idea was to use my images for a slideshow that would go along with the video but they actually ended up only using one image to illustrate the post and another image that was pushed to social.

I was a little disappointed they only used two photos but that’s how this shit works and it was still a good experience plus now I get to show you the rest of the photos. Keep in mind these photos were shot with the idea that the end product was going to be high contrast back and white so I used on camera flash and didn’t care about color balance, mostly bouncing off the cream colored ceilings or walls.

I will have another gallery of some more NYFW stuff I did for Ford soon, but in the mean time after you look at my photos make sure you check out the video we made!

Now click here to see a gallery of Ford Models having a NYFW slumber party at the Waldorf Astoria.

Ford Models @ Waldorf Astoria

Ford Models @ Waldorf Astoria

Ford Models @ Waldorf Astoria

Ford Models @ Waldorf Astoria

Ford Models @ Waldorf Astoria

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The Final 2015 Gathering Of The Juggalos Post

This is it. The very last 2015 Gathering of the Juggalos update. You made it! Now we can go back to naked porn stars and hipster parties and shit. Get excited. As soon as I get back from vacation I will hit you with a few naked babes to make up for all the juggalos.

This post is just a dump of everything left over from the Gathering. It starts with the very first photo I took of a car that was being signed by everyone and ends with a photo of some wrestlers moving a safe. (Just FYI I was told on good authority that the car was signed by Tech N9ne’s tattoo artist so it’s pretty valuable.)

In here we have a lot of juggalo photos that weren’t quite good enough to make the Juggalo Portraits gallery plus photos of stuff for sale, some crowd shots, pictures of juggalo campsites and vehicles and some of the Wolfpac/ Psychopathic Radios events that didn’t make it in the fight club update. There’s also some juggalo tattoos and some pictures of juggalos getting tattoos. No photo of my new juggalo tattoo though…

So that’s it for the photos, but I also wanted to include a list of all of the articles and photo galleries I had published in different outlets across the internet.

Noisey:
We Followed Electronic Punk Rappers Ho99o9 To Their First ‘Gathering Of The Juggalos’ Festival
Inside The Gathering Of The Juggalos’ Annual Bare Knuckling Boxing Competition
Waka Flocka Won Over A Skeptical Gathering Of The Juggalos Crowd By Force
No Frowns In Clown Town: The People At The Gathering Of The Juggalos 2015
Behind The Scenes At The Gathering Of The Juggalos’ Most Infamous Stage Show

Rolling Stone:
See Freaky, Fiery Photos From The 2015 Gathering Of The Juggalos

Chicagoist:
Get Weird With Our NSFW Photos From The Gathering Of The Juggalos

Now click here to see the massive gallery of the rest of my 2015 Gathering of the Juggalos photos!

Adios Juggalos

Mr. Juggalo Pageant

Mother & Daughter Face Tattoos

Jealous?

Team Vice

Colt Cabana & OG Kevin Gill

Wolfpac Weirdness

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Ho99o9 @ The Gathering Of The Juggalos – 7.22.15

Headed back to NYC today after four days hanging with insane clowns and then a quick trip to Indianapolis. Assuming I don’t miss my flight I will be in NYC just in time to get stuck in rush hour traffic on the way home. On Thursday I go on a mini vacation so I am going to try to get as many Gathering of the Juggalos galleries up as possible before I leave.

We start with the beginning: Ho99o9. If you have been following my site I shot the punk/rap band Ho99o9 at SXSW and then again at their record release party in LA. When I found out they were playing the Gathering I knew I had to see them again but I took it a step farther and pitched the idea of following them to Noisey. What I thought was going to be a paragraph with a photo essay turned out to be a proper article about the trip with just a handful of photos for illustration.

So instead of me blogging anymore, just read my Noisey article about Ho99o9!

And then if you want to see more photos click here to see a full gallery Ho99o9at the Gathering of the Juggalos!

Ho99o9 @ The Gathering Of The Juggalos

Ho99o9 @ The Gathering Of The Juggalos

Ho99o9 @ The Gathering Of The Juggalos

Ho99o9 @ The Gathering Of The Juggalos

Ho99o9 @ The Gathering Of The Juggalos

 

Ho99o9 @ The Gathering Of The Juggalos

Ho99o9 @ The Gathering Of The Juggalos

 

 

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Hustler AVN Issue Outtakes

Back in January during the AVN Awards in Vegas I did some sort of photo documentary of the “behind the scenes” of the awards and the Adult Entertainment Expo for Hustler Magazine. The issue came out on Tuesday and you should clearly go buy it. It has 15 of the raddest babes in porn including a bunch of girls I have photographed before like Ash Hollywood, Veruca James, Katie St. Ives, Eve Cates and of course Skin Diamond & Asphyxia Noir and while in Vegas I shot mini shoots with Alaina Fox and Sovereign Syre that I have already published. It also features a bunch of girls I have never photographed before but always wanted to shoot like April O’Neil, Charlotte Stokely, Sasha Pain, Ela Darling and the amazing Stoya!

The shoot with Samantha Bentley and Lexi Lowe didn’t make it into the issue because of messed up paperwork.  I aslo shot Kimberly Kane for the issue but we had to cut some pictures for space so she was the first to go because she is pretty much the person I am closest to in life so I knew she wouldn’t care if she made it in or not. I was right.

Anyway, I did bigger shoots with a bunch of people that I will be posting in the future, but in the case of Stoya, Veruca, Katie, Evelyn and KK I only shot a few photos of them each so I put them all together in one gallery and decided to post it today to promote the issue. So go buy it!

And then click here to see outtakes of Stoya, Veruca James, Katie St. Ives, Eve Cates and Kimberly Kane from my AVN Awards “behind the scenes” editorial in the August 2013 issue of Hustler Magazine!

Stoya

Kimberly Kane

Eve Cates Signs

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