Electric Daisy Carnival – Day 2 – 6.26.10

And we are back…

Electronic Daisy Carnival only got crazier on Day 2. I took 600 pictures of half naked drug crazed maniacs dancing their asses off and rubbing each other.  Will.I.Am was a dick to me and Lil John started screaming at people to stop jumping fences.  It was all pretty out of control. I think I had more fun on Saturday even though I was more exhausted. I printed up makeshift business cards at Kinkos and they were a hit.  Dana Dearmond and I just wrote a bunch of dumb things with my website address on them on a sheet of paper and I cut them up so their were 14 different cards. Plus the guy at Kinkos was an old school rave kid and hooked me up with a big discount.

Highlights for me included seeing my old friend Zoe, flirting with girls both 10 years older and younger than me, and losing my phone.  Oh wait, that last part fucking sucked.  Right before MSTRKRFT went on my phone just wasn’t in my pocket anymore.  I am 99% sure I lost it during Duck Sauce’s set and I thought I was going to lose my mind.  Luckily I just lost $250 when I had to buy a new damn phone. If you happened to find my phone, let me know. I can still return the new one… I found some kids ID and mailed it back to him so I got some Karma points to cash in.

Anyway ignore my ranting and just click here to see over 600 crazy pictures from Saturday at Electric Dance Carnival 2010.

PS. This gallery is mildy NSFW. See if you can spot the nudity. Its like Where’s Waldo but with nipples.

Will.I.Am At EDC

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Electronic Daisy Carnival – Day 1 – 6.25.10

So I meant to get these up yesterday so I could get day two up today and have them both up before the weekend but clearly that is not going to happen. Still, you at least get day one up nice and early.  I took a short nap at my friends hous but I basically got home at 11am and am ready to work for a couple hours before I pass out again.  So let’s get it on.

First of all, I had no idea what the Electric Daisy Carnival or EDC even was.  I got a Dim Mak email that they were doing a stage and a bunch of people I knew were on it so I decided to check out the fest.  I saw that a bunch of huge acts were playing so I tried to get on the press list since I was gonna be in LA then anyway. I still didn’t realize the magnitude of the thing until I talked to JFK from MSTRKRFT about it and he told me it was the craziest shit he had ever been to in his life.  When MSTRKRFT tells you some shit is going to be nuts, its going to be nuts.

When I got to the LA Coliseum there were people everywhere, mostly wearing Hello Kitty backpacks, but it seemed like no more of an event than a Warped Tour or something of that magnitude. It took me about an hour to find the press entrance and when I found it I realized I was walking through the tunnel that the USC Trojans run out of before games.  I walked through the tunnel and I just saw the most people I have ever seen in my life. The place was just filled with people as far as you could see.  They were all half naked and on drugs and they wouldn’t let them on the field anymore. People were jumping fences just to get near the field.  It was pretty fucking out of control. Oh, and that was just one of FIVE stages.

I’m not sure I really had a fun time. I mean, I think you have to be on a lot of drugs to enjoy some shit like that.  Also it might have been fun if I could have flirted with girls, but I had no idea who was under 18 and who wasn’t so I decided to play it safe. I asked this one flirtatious cute girl if there was any chance she was 18 yet, and she earnestly asked “No, are you 18 yet?” Good God. I tried to hang out with some friends but I got no cell service so that was a bust.  I really have just tons of shit to say about the whole fiasco, but this post is already getting long and I will have another update about it tomorrow.

The one last thing I do have to mention is that I took 2800 photos in two days at EDC.  I am posting over 500 pictures today and over 600 pictures tomorrow. These updates are fucking massive. Trying to pick out a few of the best images is going to take me 30 minutes by itself, but I really hope you enjoy looking through these, there is some crazy stuff in here. It’s probably not really safe for work, but there is nothing specifically offensive other than adult humans dressed as little children which is pretty upsetting. Enjoy the show.

Click here to see over 500 images from the 2010 Electric Daisy Carnival at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Rivers Cuomo & Steve Aoki

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THROWBACK THURSDAY: BEST OF 2010

As you may know I have been making my way through every photo I have ever taken, trying to pull the best images, and somehow organize everything a little better. The goal in the end is to make a series of different portfolio sites highlighting several types of work I do because it doesn’t make a lot of sense to show all my work to every client. I launched a rough version of my new very NSFW 35mm site yesterday and it’s a bit bipolar already without involving any of my event or commercial work.

For a while I was editing a month a day but things slowed down recently as I worked on Dinner With Igor and my Vegas photo album, but I finally finished going through all of 2010. Since people seemed to love my “Best of 2009” gallery I figured I should do a 2010 version. It’s pretty much just event work, I decided to leave the naked babes out of this, but the gallery is still NSFW.

2010 was interesting because I really stepped up my game as far as camera gear. I upgraded from the consumer camera the Nikon D-300 to the pro full frame D-700. I also stopped using kit lenses (I was always worried about bringing a $1700 lens into a nightclub) and bought a couple serious lenses including my standard event lens the 24-70mm 2.8. The odd thing is I think my event photography actually got worse as a result. My portrait work got a lot stronger but as I went through 2010 I noticed that I started slacking on my party photos. Looking back has made me want to up my game a little bit. I think this whole thing has been a great experience despite the tedium.

A few highlights from 2010 include:

I got laid off from my last real job in December 2008. Most of 2009 I was still thinking about getting a real job, receiving unemployment and trying to figure out what the hell I was doing next. By 2010 I was all in. Aside from spending a quarter of my income on camera gear I also started traveling a lot more including a month long trip where I photographed SXSW Film, SXSW Music, Winter Music Conference and then hit Slaughterama on the way home. It was a pretty good year.

Click here to see a massive gallery of the best of 2010 event photos!

Jon Stewart

Hole Reunion Show

Juggalos! Always Juggalos!

RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman

Aaron Paul & Jack Novak

Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg & Billy Crystal

Iron Maiden

Happy New Years

EDC

Grace Dunham, Lena Dunham & Laurie Simmons

Major Lazer

Furries Vs Draven Star

Bill Fucking Murray

 

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Build It By Dawn – 8.3.13

Saturday night Bury Me In Brooklyn threw a party at 35 Beadel Street and they asked me to come out and shoot. My friends DKDS and Cobra Krames were spinning and I have always had a good time at the Bury Me In Brooklyn parties on Beadel St so I figured I would check it out. I didn’t know any of the other DJ’s but I was told that they were like candy raver DJ’s which was just slightly confusing to me because it is not 1998.

I grew up in DC during the 90’s when DC was pretty much the rave capital of the United States. I wasn’t into the dance music scene, but I did hang out with a lot of people who did a lot of drugs and parties were the place to get them. We would roll up on some club and try to buy drugs in line and then bounce before we even had to pay the cover. Then we would go back to someone’s house and listen to punk rock and do shit like E, Special K and “Crystal” which was what everyone called meth before those terrifying faces of meth ads. GHB was also pretty popular but you would take it yourself instead of rapping people with it. I was actually straightedge at the time but I hung out with a diverse bunch of fuck ups and I was always disturbed seeing my punk friends sucking on a pacifier because they were “rolling face.”

Anyway, the point of this rant is that seeing my nearly adult friends wearing Pokemon backpacks and wearing candy necklaces and sucking on pacifiers was awful 15 years ago and I thought it died out. Clearly it was just lurking about in Europe or something and when EDM came back, so did the grown ass people dressed like little kids. And yes, I know I went to EDC once and I wrote a whole article making fun of just their back packs but this was at a fucking  Brooklyn warehouse party. I didn’t even know how to deal with this so I just started talking to ravers about the 90s and how fucking old and grumpy I am and asking them about UFO pants.

Sorry for my old person rant about “these damn kids today”. You should just look at the pictures and either be psyched cause you are in them looking super fresh in your bedazzled rainbow gauntlets or because you want to laugh at said people. Either way this gallery is worth taking a look at.

Click here to see all the pictures from Build It By Dawn at 35 Beadel St.

DKDS & Cobra Krames

Build It By Dawn

Build It By Dawn

Build It By Dawn

Build It By Dawn

 

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EDC Part 1: Fucking Backpacks, How Do They Work?

Over the weekend there was this insane rave in LA called Electronic Dance Carnival. I just happened to be in town during it and I had a few friends DJing, so I figured I would request a press pass.  I shot over 2800 photos over two days.  Over 100,000 people showed up on Saturday for one of the most mind-blowing event I have ever been too. After I ran out of cards on the first day I went to Kinko’s with a hand written piece of paper and came out with 1000 of the most ghetto business cards the world has ever seen and handed most of them out.  Then I lost my phone and had my flash battery die on me at the same time and I flipped out and went home before I even got to see MSTRKRFT play.

Now, because I shot so many photos I am going to wait until I get back to NYC to get them up. Its just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with on my last two days in LA.  I get back Wednesday and day one should be up that night or early Thursday. This means that if I gave you a business card on Saturday your pictures should be up on Thursday or Friday at the latest.

On day one of EDC I told everyone I was working for the LA Weekly because they only had a photographer there on Saturday, but the Weekly just put up the other photogs pics and it looks like they only ran images from Friday. So I don’t know if the LA Weekly is even going to run any of these images, but if they do hopefully they told people that the outtakes would be posted here… and they will be.

Basically this whole post is to tell my fans to get ready for some total weirdness from EDC and to tell people looking for pictures that they will be up soon. Why don’t you take a look around the site while you wait?

But what I am posting today is still pretty hilarious even if it is only a teaser to how ridiculous this event was.  After I was done shooting the first night I realized that I had photographed over 50 pictures of adults wearing backpacks made for children.  Of all the silly stuff about rave culture the back packs to me are the funniest.  It seems that Hello Kitty is by far the most popular back pack, but Muppet, specifically Elmo, are a close second.  I guess the kids who were making their parents kill themselves to buy Tickle-Me-Elmo for Christmas have finally grown up and are eating unreasonable amounts of ecstasy and dressing like toddlers. After I realized I had shot so many backpacks on day one, I really went after it on day two and assembled a lifetimes worth of hilarious photos.

Peace, Love and Unity you got… but if you dress like a 7 year old you aren’t getting Respect.

Check out the first batch of cringe worthy photos from the Electronic Daisy Carnival by clicking here and then come back later in the week to see the real pictures.  They are pretty fucking amazing. PLUR.

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