A quick update today while I organize the rest of my Lollapalooza shots and try to enjoy Chicago now that I don’t have to work all day.  These are the shots from the second night of the Filter Magazine Lollapalooza after party.  If you didn’t see the shots from the first night they are here.

The location – Hard Rock Hotel, the free booze – Sailor Jerry Rum – and the Celebrity DJ – Elijah Wood, remained the same but there were some changes in the mix as well.  Kid Color DJd and Phantogram played early in the night, but the night was headlined by Foster The People who completely packed the place.  They also brought Lindsay Lohan with them who clearly didn’t want her photo taken so I didn’t take it. That being said you can see her in the back ground of one shot… see if you can find it!

Anyway, the night was a lot of fun and you should have been there. Click here to see all the shots from the Saturday night Filter After Party at the Hard Rock Hotel.

I gotta go get my ass down to Lollapalooza right now but I wanted to quickly get the photos from last night to you. I hit up the Filter Magazine after party at the Hard Rock Hotel in Chicago.  Of all people Elijah Wood was DJing. He is so tiny and DJ’s with an iPod but also he seemed very nice and took photos with a bunch of people and that sort of thing. Plus he was in Green Street Hooligans so I am on the record as pro Elija Wood. Chris Holmes also DJ’d who I have seen do his thing in LA. He does the Night Swim party at the Roosevelt which is probably my favorite party in LA. Two bands played, Maps & Atlases and Cults. They were both way better than average and pretty interesting if not exactly my cup of tea. On top of that there was free Sailor Jerry rum which is awesome because while I rarely drink, I do have a pretty sweet Sailor Jerry tattoo.

So yeah, good DJs, good bands, free booze… I will be back tonight…

Click here to see all the pictures from the Filter Magazine Lollapalooza After Party at the Hard Rock Hotel.

The best thing that came out of my experience at the Britney Spears Femme Fatale tour was that I now can properly spell Nicki Minaj’s name.  While tweeting about the concert I spelled her name in three different tweets in three different ways. Luckily now I am a Nicki Minaj spelling expert.

Honestly the main reason I wanted to go all the way to Long Island to the Nassau Coliseum was so that I could shoot Nicki Minaj. I think she is pretty fucking bad ass and I figured she would be interesting to shoot. Also, unlike for the Britney Spears photos, I didn’t have to sign some crazy contract giving up my copyright to any of the photos. I did however have to stand just as far back and we only got three songs to shoot which was made insanely difficult by both little girls in pink wigs standing on their chairs in front of me and the asshole sound guy who flipped out if I blocked his view of the stage for even a second as I got a shot.

Whatever, these photos are cropped and mediocre, but she is fucking adorable and the show was awesome. Plus Kanye West showed up and did Monster with her which would have been more awesome if they let me shoot it, but of course they pulled us out of there a song before Yeezy did his thing.

Click here to see all the Nicki Minaj photos I got from the Femme Fatale Tour at Nasau Coliseum.

So I shot the Britney Spears Femme Fatale tour for the Village Voice. It’s not often that I blog about Britney Spears and I didn’t ever think I would go to a Britney Spears concert in my life but when I got asked to do it clearly I couldn’t say no. I always regretted my chance to shoot photos in a NASCAR pit and I feel like Britney Spears is as close as you can get to a NASCAR pit without risking getting hit with a flaming race car tie.

Anyway, I was told I had to sign some insane contract that gives away all my rights to the photos and that I could only have usage of them for 3o days.  Well copyright law says that no work can be copyrighted until it exists, so signing a form before I took the photos is completely invalid. And besides I didn’t even sign my name. Whatever the case you should probably enjoy these photos now because there is a pretty good chance I will get a cease and desist order from Britney’s people at some point.

To add to my annoyance of the whole ordeal after driving for 90 minutes to get to the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island I found out that I had to stand nearly 50 yards away from the stage and in between the photographers and the acts there were about 500 fans waving their cell phones in the air to record the show. We were given tickets so that I could watch the show between the acts and the view from my seats was 100 times better than the photo pit but they wouldn’t let me have my camera on me during the show.

Oh, but for the record the show was pretty awesome and I probably would have had more fun than I should have had I not been so pissed about the photo situation. I also ran into two of friends there. Oh, and did I mention that Nicki Minaj opened for her? Those pics will be up tomorrow… She fucking killed it.

So these photos were taken during four songs in the middle of her set, shot from 50 yards away with a 200mm lens and then severely cropped for your enjoyment…

Click here to see all the pictures of Britney Spears Femme Fatale tour at the Nassau Coliseum.

I met Ashley Blue at the NYC release of her book on her experiences in the porn industry Girlvert. She is married to photographer Dave Naz who I started corresponding with after we both did guest spots on the blog Late Night Feelings. Dave and I ended up doing a print trade and when he came to NYC for Ashley’s book launch I finally got a chance to meet him. I ended up talking to both of them a ton and when I went out to LA they invited me to a BBQ.

At the BBQ Ashely and I ended up talking about me shooting photos of her. She is semi retired from the adult industry and told me she really only shoots with Dave but she said she liked my work and that she would be down to shoot something.  A few days later I went back to their place and we took a bunch of 35mm shots around the house and talked and looked at Dave’s art books and then finally decided we should get on with the real shoot.

I didn’t really see a place I wanted to shoot in her house so we decided to go outside. They live up in the Hollywood Hills and they have this cool observatory thing above the house. We tried to climb up there but the steps were really sketchy and we quickly gave up on that idea. Turns out climbing a cliff in heels is not ideal.  We tried to shoot in the garage but I was getting picky and didn’t love the light.  We decided to go by the side of the house but we were worried neighbors would see. In the back of the house they had this old BBQ grill.  They got a new one so the old one was sort of just sitting there unloved. Her and I both wanted to shoot something really weird so we figured the BBQ grill was an okay place to start.  We decided to go inside to see if we could find something to put on the grill as a prop and that’s when we realized we were locked out. Shit.

We had to call Dave who was on a shoot and he had to drive all the way back and let us in.  In the mean time we finally got to shooting but by that time I was a bit unmotivated and we shot pretty quickly. It was so bright out there that I didn’t even realize that a lot of my shots were over exposed and she was squinting from the sun.  I was pretty disapointed with the shots at first, but when I finally got around to editing them I sort of changed my mind. I ended up liking the set I got a lot more than I orginally did but I still like the 35mm stuff we shot a lot more.

Long story short, Dave and Ashley rule, go buy Girlvert, this set is radder than I thought and you should check out the 35mm shots of Ashley in this gallery of my LA 35mm shots if you haven’t already.

Also I meant to get this post up yesterday but I didn’t. Stop bitching. Do you want your NSFW shots or not? Yeah, I thought so…

Click here to see all of my pictures of Ashley Blue cleaning her BBQ grill naked.

I didn’t make any plans over the weekend because I thought I might have to attend my grandmother’s funeral as she has been unable to process liquids for over a week.  Fortunately, she seems to be invincible and refuses to die. So when I realized that I was going to be in town this weekend I started looking for things to do.  I decided to hit up the Vans House Party on Friday and I realized that the Mad Decent Block Party was on Saturday.  Right as I was about to start emailing people to try to get on a press list I got an email from PBR asking me to shoot the event for them and Colt 45’s new brightly colored malt beverage Blast.  As a former resident of Richmond, VA where PBR is considered the only respectable beer to drink I have long been a fan of Pabst.  I don’t actually drink beer but if I did clearly I would drink the only drink to be mentioned in both my favorite David Lynch movie and my favorite book about a serial killer and landscape architecture.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that everything worked out perfectly. I got an all access pass to the party, got paid to shoot, and then sold the pictures to the Village Voice which of course made PBR happy. It was a win-win-win especially since I am the brokest I have been in a couple years. Wait, why the fuck am I talking about all of this? Clearly I have taken too much 5-Hour Energy this afternoon. Let’s get on to the party…

I didn’t get down to the South Street Seaport until around 5:30PM and it was packed. It was completely wild how many people showed up.  I don’t think I have seen anything like that in NYC outside of Madison Square Garden. Not even at the Jelly Pool parties. My homie Maluca was on stage when I got there but unfortunately by the time I got my passes and got to the stage she was finished. Zeds Dead went on after her and the crowd was bumping. I spent most of their set shooting the back stage and VIP areas because PBR was giving out free PBR & Blast back there and also cause most of my friends were back there.  During Gang Gang Dance’s set I ventured into the wild masses of people and shot a bunch of crowd shots.  The night ended with Claude Von Stroke DJing until they finally had to kick everyone out.  There were so many people down there it took me 45 min to find a cab and then he wouldn’t take me home so I walked a mile to a subway and went home and passed out by midnight only to wake up 4 hours later…

All and all a great day.  Click here to see all the pictures from the Mad Decent NYC Block Party at the South Street Seaport.