W-Fuck-Off Radio returned to The Gathering of the Juggalos. Hosted by the dudes in Wolfpac, Psychopathic Radio is a one stop shop to see totally fucking wild shit at The Gathering of the Juggalos. For four hours every day they mix insane clown tunes with making people do horrible things and then they add in a bunch of strippers. Aside from taking photos of topless girls dancing on poles I shot three actual events that Wolfpac was instigating. The first was a drinking contest involving four beer bongs, four shots of vodka and four shots of hot sauce. Four people did this and only two of them made it through without quitting. One of those two guys then went on to face another guy who had not been drinking in a vodka shot contest. You had to do a beer bong and then do 10 straight shots in a row. The sober guy did his 10 shots and then started vomiting. The other guy who in total did about 5 beers and 15 shots of vodka was totally fine and won a bunch of prizes. I am sure he died several minutes after I left.

The next thing I saw was kinda stupid. They had a tug-a-war contest with one guy on each team in roller skates and another guy blindfolded. In the middle was a baby pool full of thumbtacks and pond water and other horrible things so that they would get nice and infected. Unfortunately no one really fell in the baby pool so they just put the thumbtacks everywhere and people got them in their hands and knees and stuff which was kinda funny but it was a lot of build up for mediocre results.

The third event went above and beyond. I was riding around with the Psychopathic publicist on her golf cart when I saw people just punching each other on stage. I jumped off and ran over and it seemed there was some sort of gimmick originally where they had their hands tied or something but by the time I got there these dudes were just punching each other in the face. This black dude with burn scars all over his body seemed to have some Muy Thai training and ended the fight by kneeing the other dude in his head over and over again. It was fucking brutal. Both dudes stood up to a lot of blows and I was really impressed. The dude who won gave all his prizes to the crowd… he was just into it for the glory. It was one of the best things I saw all week and I took a lot of 35mm shots too. I can’t wait to get that shit developed. Amazing.

Click here to see all the very NSFW shots from Wolfpac’s W-Fuck-Off radio show at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

The Gathering of the Juggalos lasted five days this year. That’s one extra day than last year. Based on the fact that I haven’t stopped coughing since I got back it was probably a day too long. Wednesday was the opening day and Sunday was a chill day that was over early but on Thursday, Friday and Saturday shit went all night. Each day there was an after party that started at 2AM and in at least one case didn’t end until the sun came up. The parties were held in this little tent called The Bomb House and featured a lot of sick artists and were some of the best events of the Gathering.

On Thursday night Violent J hosted his West Side party where he brought up a bunch of west coast legends to do their thing. Although I generally prefer east coast rap to the west I actually thought J’s party was the best of the three. Warren G started shit off which aside from being awesome it itself was a little blast from the recent juggalo past. At my first Gathering Warren G was actually the first artist as I saw walking into the event. I was pretty terrified so it was cool to see how far I have come in between Warren G sets. He did a Nate Dogg medley which everyone in the crowd sang a long to. They also did Nate’s verses in Regulator. It was pretty amazing. After Warren G a dude name Glasses Malone came up. He is on Cash Money and I don’t know much about him but he went over well. After that you had the Pharcyde… well actually just Booty Brown and Imani are all that’s left of the Pharcyde but I am not fucking complaining. I am a HUGE Pharcyde fan and I was sitting on the stage trying to take photos but just singing along to every word making a fool of myself. I actually caught a juggalo in the crowd video taping me losing it. Seriously the Pharcyde killed it and between them and Onyx it was the musical highlight of my trip. Lil Eazy came up to end the night. He is the son of Eazy E and opened his set doing Eazy E covers which was fucking amazing since I am the worlds biggest white kid from the suburbs Eazy E fan. Again I was singing along to every word until my friends dragged me the fuck out of there cause it was 5AM and we had an hour drive back to our cabin.

Click here to see all the pictures from Violent J’s West Side Party at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

On Friday night Shaggy 2 Dope hosted his Beasts of the East party. I was pretty pumped for this because the Fat Boys were going to be there. I know most people think of the Fat Boys as this novelty act from the 80’s but I am honestly a really big fan. How many people do you know that own multiple Fat Boys’ records on CD, tape and vinyl? Unfortunately they canceled but we were still left with a pretty serious line up. In one of the more surreal moments of my life both Biz Markie and Rahzel came out together and beat boxed as a team. We are talking about (along with Doug E. Fresh) the best beat boxers in history performing together. It was awesome. After that shit got even crazier with Raekwon the Chef from the Wu Tang Clan coming out and just destroying shit. Of all three parties the crowd responded most to Raekwon and it seemed juggalos know ever word to every Wu Tang jam. Lastly former Psychopathic records artist Myzery showed up to replace The Fat Boys. Juggalos seemed psyched but I don’t know any of his stuff so I took a few pictures and bounced. The dude is from NYC though so I had to give him some respect at least. Not too many New  Yorkers at Cave In Rock.

Click here to see all the pictures from Shaggy 2 Dope’s Beast of the East party at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos.

Saturday night Twiztid hosted the Dirty Dirty Party. Now I don’t really fuck with that much dirty south shit and my friends Wolfpac were playing at the same time so I decided not to shoot much of the party. I showed up late right as Jellyroll was leaving the stage. I had met Lil Wyte earlier in the day so I shot most of his set the party was bumping and there were naked juggalette’s on stage. By Saturday everyone had lost their minds and shit was getting weird. Haystak came on so I shot a little bit of his set and then I rolled over to the Wolfpac’s show. I missed Rittz who I really wanted to see and figured I would miss Project Pat but by the time I got back at 5AM Project Pat had just taken the stage. I figured all my friends had left but they were all there and we jammed out to Project Pat doing a couple of songs that Three Six Mafia had done the night before. All my media crew was completely tore up and it ended up being some of the most fun I had the whole trip. It was daylight by the time we left and I think I ended up going to bed at 9am. Good times.

Click here to see all the pictures from Twizid’s Dirty Dirty party at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos. Some shots in this set are NSFW.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

I have returned from my favorite yearly photographic adventure, The Gathering of the Juggalos. I have returned with some sort of insane juggalo virus and have slept about 25 hours out of the last 36. In the remaning 11 hours I have edited all 7000 photos down to about 1700 and sent everything off to clients and organized everything into roughly 30 galleries that I will be posting between now and when I go on a much needed vacation next Wednesday.

For those of you who are somehow out of the loop, the Gathering of the Juggalos is a music festival in Cave In Rock, IL right by the Ohio river on the  border of Illinois and Kentucky. To get there I drove three and a half hours from St. Louis through back roads. There is no cell service and no cops. You are in the wild with thousands and thousands of kids in clown make up. This is my third year at the Gathering and the first time there was a serious media presence. There was a WIFI network set up and it felt a little less dangerous than in the past but it’s still a wild fucking place.

This year I was actually hired by Psychopathic Records as the official in house photographer and I got some great access and I think I ended up with my best pictures yet. You can be the judge but I am pretty happy with the photos.

I thought we would start this off with the big Insane Clown Posse show held on Saturday night of the five day weekend. Say what you will about the Insane Clown Posse’s music, but they put on one of the best live shows I have ever seen. I talked to several members of the media who had never seen them before and they were all blown away by how good it was. Even if you hate ICP I can’t imagine you wouldn’t leave their show impressed.

ICP is also one of the hardest bands to photograph because they pour Faygo cola all over everyone. I was prepared with rain gear but I still had to leave the photo pit every few songs to clean off my lens. Even then my rain gear would get pushed too far over my lens and I ended up with vignetting which actually kinda looks cool in a few shots.

At the end of every Insane Clown Posse show they have what they call the “Faygo Armageddon” where they invite everyone back stage on to stage to throw all the remaining Faygo onto the crowd. I got to do it last year and it was honestly one of the most fun moments of my life. This year I had to document the thing so I went to the back of the stage and just kept firing off shots. I probably took 300 photos of one song and few of them came out because I was just firing and praying stuff would look good. I probably should have switched to auto mode for it but I was mostly just trying not to get hit with enough Faygo to destroy my camera. In the end I got some truly amazing shots of the thing and had a blast in the process. My camera even made it out in pretty good shape.

Now I think it is finally time to look at some pictures! There will be a LOT more coming soon!

Click here to see all the photos from the Insane Clown Posse show at the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos in Cave In Rock, IL.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

Right now I am on the way to Cave In Rock, IL. Wait, let me take that back. Right now I am in a cheap motel by the airport in St. Louis but by the time this post is published I will be on my way to Cave In Rock. This little town of 400 people is in the middle of nowhere. It’s three and a half hours from St. Louis and three hours from Nashville. To get there you have to go down dirt roads and take a ferry over the Ohio River. But once you get there and past the state troopers doing random searches of everyone you get to the magical Dark Carnival that is the Gathering of the Juggalos.

Insane Clown Posse is throwing their annual music festival and it has become by far my favorite thing to photograph every year. It’s the craziest fucking thing I have ever been to with five straight days of absolutely no rules, naked fat girls and huge bands opening up for bands most people have never heard of. How often do you get to see George Clinton or Ice Cube open up for Dark Lotus? Exactly. Wild shit.

After two years of shooting the Gathering for the Village Voice as an outsider this year I have actually been hired by the festival to shoot so I should be bringing you guys some unprecedented access to the weirdest music festival on earth. The problem with Cave In Rock is that there is no cell phone service and my only link to the outside world might be the wifi set up back stage at the festival. Other than that I might be cut off completely.

It’s not certain but I would assume that I will not be able to update my site again until next Tuesday but when I come back it’s going to be so much madness over and over again until you never want to see a 400 lb woman in clown make up naked ever again. Crazy right? In the mean time I will be doing my best to Instagram, Tumbl and Tweet my experiences every chance I get even the slightest bit of Wifi or cel service. So follow all that shit and until then check out my past adventures at the Gathering of the Juggalos by clicking here.

Until then, I have only two words for you: Whoop Whoop.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9y_2NbSu_E[/youtube]

When I was posting the photos of Kory Minx the other day I remembered that right before I photographed her I went to meet Jay Gordon from the band Orgy. I did a quick photo shoot of him for Auxiliary Magazine. I think I posted about it on Twitter when the magazine came out but I forgot to post the outtakes. We went down to this little craft fair thing in his neighborhood and walked around and took some photos of him looking at weird things. It seemed like a funny idea to have the front man from an industrial band looking at knick knacks but Auxiliary just ran photos of him on the playground.

Also, I should point out that I did this photo shoot in exchange for steak. Normally I charge actual money to take photos of things but my friend Arden needed some photos of Jay to go along with her interview and I just happened to be in LA at the time so I took them for her. I also happened to be in LA for the release party for the magazine at Bar Sinister so I got paid in American dollars to shoot that. Ultimately the steak was well worth the photo shoot and watching Arden cause a traffic accident getting money out of the ATM while half naked was well worth shooting Bar Sinister. Anyway, check out Arden’s interview with Jay Gordon and then check out the outtakes from the shoot below.

Click here to see all my photos of Jay Gordon from Orgy that I shot for Auxiliary Magazine.

Ps. Make up by Angie Peek!

Last time I shot Kory Minx we had less than 10 minutes to shoot. She showed up at my hotel room five minutes after I had to check out. We busted out a full shoot faster than I have ever shot anyone outside of a night club bathroom. The funny thing abou the shoot? We got some great shots. I was hoping I would get the chance to shoot her again and I did.

Once again Kory was running late, but she showed up at my girlfriends old apartment in LA right as the sun was starting to set. I was photographing my girlfriend Kimberly Kane in the living room when she arrived so we quickly wrapped it up and I put Kory in a chair in the corner by the window and we started shooting. This time the shoot lasted five times as long as the last one… about 20 minutes. Once again we got great shots and since my girlfriend was already naked we took a bunch of photos of them together… but you are gonna have to wait for those. (Okay, here’s one of em!)

Kory is a total babe and an awesome lady. She is constantly trying to steal my girlfriend from me, but at least she let’s me take photos of her naked a lot. You can see more of  her on Gods Girls.  And you can even see her in my new Twitter avatar sitting between me and my old lady.

Now hurry up and click here to see all the new NSFW pictures of Kory Minx!

When I got to see Marz Lovejoy open up for WuTang at SXSW a couple years ago I kinda fell in love. This girl could rap her ass off, sing the hooks like a motherfucker and look god damned adorable doing it. I talked to her a little bit during the show and ran into her and her mom on the street the next day. Since then we realized we had a lot of mutual friends and kept in touch via the internet. A couple months ago I was in LA and she was staying at her friends apartment that is pretty much in a man made jungle and we decided to do a little photo shoot.

Marz is super cute and photogenic and the grounds around the apartment building look like were build for a Disneyland ride. Actually it reminds me of this thing at Disney World. Whatever the case it was a fun setting and I made Marz climb something that said do not climb because we are rebels like that. After that I hung out for a bit while she made meatloaf and smoked weed out of a vaporizer. Good times. Anyway, you should check out her music and then look at these photos. And no, she doesn’t take her clothes off. Sorry.

Click here to see a bunch of pictures of the adorable Marz Lovejoy playing in the jungles of Silverlake, Los Angels.