Another year, another NFL Draft. If you don’t know by now, I run Dolfans NYC a nonprofit that raises money for charity through watch parties and events surrounding the Miami Dolphins. It started out with about 30 of us and has grown to thousands. It’s probably most successful thing I have done with my life and the whole thing is honestly surreal. Through the club I have been able to do some very cool things, like get really, really good tickets to the NFL Draft.

Dolfans NYC started doing group NFL Draft trips in 2008 when we had the first pick. The Draft was in NYC every year back then and we continued going until the Draft moved and started going from city to city. In 2018 the NFL came up with the “Inner Circle”, small groups of die hard fans that would be grouped by team in front of the stage, essentially making it easy for the NFL Network and ESPN camera crews to film sections of excited groups of fans for every team. I am usually not the kinda person who wants to be in any sort of spotlight, but getting on TV during the NYC Drafts got so many local Dolphins fans to google us that we sort of made it our mission to continue using the Draft as a marketing tool and have tried to make it to as many of these as possible. So far I have been to Dallas, Cleveland and Las Vegas for the Draft, and this year I made it to Kansas City.

The Dolphins didn’t have a first round pick this year so I almost didn’t go, but I had never been to KC and it was sort of a bucket list city for me. Dolfans NYC had airline miles and I told my friend Ivan that if he got the hotel room I’d bring him with me. He was down and off we went.

The Kansas City Draft was the biggest one yet. It was absolutely packed with people and over a huge space. Fortunately my back has been doing great recently and while I was in a ton of pain, it was bearable which wouldn’t have been the case a couple months ago. We eventually made our way to the Inner Circle area and joined up with all the other crazy fans. I am as diehard as a Dolphins fan as they come, but I don’t compare to some of these guys. So many of the Inner Circle crew are the costumed lunatics that are always on TV during NFL broadcasts and there’s nothing I love photographing more than passionate fans of anything, especially when they look so photogenic. 

Aside from the fans I also got to photograph some of the draft picks themselves. I didn’t have a press credential (maybe I should actually apply for one next year), so I couldn’t really shoot on stage, but I did get a few shots of the Draft picks coming out before security started cracking down on people near the front. I probably could have gotten away with a lot more if I wasn’t in all Dolphins gear, but what are you gonna do? I also got decent shots of Christian Gonzalez and Jaxon Smith-Njigba when they came out to the crowd because our section was near the Patriots and Seahawks sections. I also got photos of famous YouTubers Ryan Trahan and Donald De La Haye aka Deestroying which you can ask your kids about. 

As far as the Dolphins picks? Well we only had four because we traded a bunch away for some very good players and our owner tried to sign Tom Brady while he was still under contract with the Bucs so we got a pick stolen from us which honestly I didn’t appreciate for a bunch of different reasons. But I think we got a couple exciting players anyway. Oh, and we did make it on TV.

Anyway, let’s look at some photos. These are uploaded to the Dolfans NYC Flickr because why upload them twice and I already did a post over there so let me live. At least this one is way longer because I am fully caffeinated and I don’t have to explain the concept of Dolfans NYC to them. 

Click here to see all my photos from the 2023 NFL Draft in Kansas City, MO. 

We have a lot to talk about today. Gonna try to make this post make sense for people who hate/don’t care about NFTs and for people who are deep in it, and that’s going to be tough to do, but before I do any of that and get to the photos, we need to talk about abortion. 

These photos would have been up yesterday but I didn’t think it made any sense to post party photos during an historically awful day in American history. We have become a much more progressive country in the 50 years since Roe v. Wade was decided and yet here we are being ruled by a hard right fundamentalist minority. Women should be able to make their on medical decisions and this won’t save lives, it will only kill the poorest women. If someone wants an abortion, they will get one. Well off people will just travel to blue states while the poorest most vulnerable women will be forced to risk their own life to terminate their pregnancy. It’s a fucking nightmare. I donated to two things yesterday and I invite you to do the same. The first is a fund that goes to 92 different organizations, just make sure that if you donate that your phone number is not saved with ActBlue because you do not want hundreds of fundraising texts. The second is Brigid Alliance which does direct action to help women get abortions. They get money to travel and even childcare to look after their kids while they are away. They have a perfect rating from Charity Navigator as well. If you are here for NFTs, I am donating 100% of the profits from this photo to Brigid. 

Now, moving on. Let’s talk about Bored Apes. 

I have very mixed opinions about the Bored Ape Yacht Club and it’s hard to write about this to an audience that has such a wide mix of knowledge/views about what BAYC even is, but I am going to try. Let’s start with the basics. BAYC is a collection of 10,000 NFTs that are made up of randomly generated traits, giving them different levels of rarity and value. They have become one of the most valuable, and definitely the most recognizable NFT collection, and they have birthed several other collections as well. Because of this popularity and massive value, BAYC has become a symbol for everything people hate about NFTs. They see rich crypto bros with stupid monkey jpgs as status symbols and they think the art sucks and they don’t get it and they write off all NFTs as garbage. And the thing is, they aren’t completely wrong. 

I also don’t blame BAYC for this. There are so many garbage NFT projects that have all followed behind BYAC trying to copy their model and have caused so many people to blow so much money chasing the next BYAC. It sucks and PFPs (profile pictures or picture for proof) have made web3 a joke. It’s such a bummer as an artist just trying to make a living with this exciting new technology and people bring up apes and just write the whole thing off. 

And yes, there are a lot of awful people who own Apes. The level of privilege to own a $100k jpg and not sell it is astronomical, but I know many people who have had their lives absolutely changed by these things. They bought them cheap and either sold them for life changing money, or held on to them for the rewards which have also been life changing.  I ran into someone who I knew 15 years ago and he was able to show his artwork in a gallery all because he was given tens of thousands of dollars of “Ape Coin” just for holding on to his ape. 

Okay, so now we need to talk about the claims of racism. There is a professional troll named Ryder Ripps trying to destroy BAYC. I know Ryder a little bit and I actually think he’s pretty interesting as far as an artist. He’s been ripping off NFT collections and changing them a little bit to have a conversation about ownership and copyright and to make some money and PR out of it. I guess you could say he’s the web3 Richard Prince and I am sure both his supporters and detractors would probably enjoy that comparison. He put together a video that went viral recently that was basically a Q Anon video for NFTs claiming that BAYC is a white supremacist organization. It’s really silly and BAYC did a good job of refuting it, and I am sure even Ryder knows it’s all nonsense, but a good troll never admits the troll. They’ve also sued Ryder which is exactly what he wanted and his RR BAYC collection has been skyrocketing in value. 

So no, BYAC is not a secret racist organization, but I do think there is something a little problematic with anthropomorphizing apes, especially when you have traits that are generally associated with black culture. When I first saw BYAC I almost minted one, just because of the Driven By Boredom association, but two things kept me away, the fact that I had just lost some of the first ETH I ever made on a 10k project, and because I thought the apes with grills thing was a little gross. I clearly regret this decision and while I still think Apes are a little corny, the community around them is very impressive and nearly everything Yuga Labs has done as a company has been impressive. 

Which finally brings me to Ape Fest. 

Ape Fest is a festival that takes place around NFT NYC. This is the second one and the first one since the line for Ape Fest 2021 went viral for having a bunch of white dudes making ape noises in line. This year they made the very smart decision to allow plus ones (which is how I got in) and there were a lot more women, and even some non-white people there. A revelation. Web3 clearly skews towards a certain demographic but there are a lot of people trying to fix that and NFT NYC did feel a lot less broy compared to last year. 

I went to Day 4 of the fest, which takes place at Pier 17, down in by the water in the financial district. They had a massive inflatable ape at the entrance and a pirate ship just hanging out with BAYC sails. The party itself was on the roof of a building but the massive amount of money they spent on the surrounding area was not unnoticed. 

The event was pretty impressive and well run and the acts were pretty impressive. There were a lot of real goofy motherfuckers around, but everyone was super nice. As much as I would like to make fun of it, I really did appreciate the invite from one of my NFT collectors who goes by Freecard. He’s a great dude and it was a real experience. 

The party started with an NFT themed rapper named Spottie WiFi. I honestly expected him to look like his Crypto Punk since that’s how I know him. I am not sure his music is for me, but I have been in Spaces and Discords with him and he seems like a good dude. It was very cool to see him perform on this huge stage in front of his people. 

After that Lil Wayne performed and as much as I used to love him, I am not sure that getting the rapper most associated with the MAGA movement is an ideal way to let people know that you aren’t a secret white supremacist group. I still like a ton of his music though so it was at least enjoyable. Towards the end of his set my hurt back started killing me so I sat down and then someone managed to drop an entire whiskey drink on my from above. So that was fun..

After that Snoop came out with Eminem and they debuted their new song which isn’t about NFTs, but features the Apes that they each own. It’s actually a pretty good song & video and the comments on it make me feel that most people don’t even know what BAYC is. Eminem didn’t perform but Snoop did. He mostly was just DJing but he rapped some too. He had a song about Ape Coin which was a little cringe, but otherwise it was pretty fun. I think I’ve seen Snoop 4 times now and you can’t go wrong with that. That being said, he did have a couple strippers on stage with him, and despite most of my friends being strippers or former strippers, I still think it’s kinda a bad look for BAYC when they are trying to let people know they aren’t just a bunch of pale dudes. 

Lastly, and maybe most importantly outside of the whole Handmaid’s Tale situation, is that I didn’t shoot this like it was an event. I didn’t have press access so I didn’t shoot any of the music except a couple wide shots. I didn’t bring my flash so once it got dark I didn’t really shoot. I really just took my camera out because I didn’t want to carry it on my back anymore. My spine is completely fucked so it’s much less painful to hold my camera than carry it on my back. I also was rocking a terrible plastic lens because it’s way lighter than my normal one. So yeah, there aren’t many photos. I took a few of people I met, and some photos of people taking photos because I am working on a phone themed zine. I took some photos of a limbo contest but it was pretty dark at that point and a few other shots randomly here and there. It’s not great coverage of the event, but it did give me a chance to write this 1600 word article about all this stuff.

So TL;DR, abortion should be a woman’s choice, NFTs aren’t all animal jpgs, BAYC is a little bit corny and a little bit problematic, but they have changed lives, have done a lot of great stuff and threw some amazing events. 

Now click here to see a couple dozen photos from Day 4 of Ape Fest 2022 at Pier 17.

Ps. Something is fucked up with my gallery system because my website is archaic, so until I fix it I am using a Flickr gallery like it’s 2007. 

I have no idea why I go to the NFL Draft nearly every year. It’s a complete mystery. I don’t watch college football so I don’t know who any of the players are and yet I have gone to 10 out of the last 15 Drafts. One of those Drafts was a virtual Draft and I actually was shown on TV via Zoom for that one so I think that actually makes it 11 out of 15.

It all started as a marketing decision. As you may know I run the world’s largest Miami Dolphins fan club, but it didn’t start out that way. Back in 2008 we didn’t even exist yet, we had a small group of Dolphins fans that watched together but we were hoping to find more. The Dolphins had the first pick in the NFL Draft and back then the Draft was in New York every year so we figured it would be a fun experience and maybe we could find some new local Dolphins fans. By 2009 our crew had grown bigger and just before the Draft my business partner Michelle and I set up social media accounts for a new “official” NYC Dolphins fan club called Dolfans NYC. We hadn’t watched a game as Dolfans NYC yet, but we were building. We made flyers and brought them to the Draft to hand out to every Dolphins fan we could find. It was great outreach. 

After that we went to every NFL Draft in NYC using it to try and get on TV, not for the “fame” but so that Dolphins fans at home watching might realize that there was a club of Dolphins fans in NYC and maybe they should type Dolfans NYC into google and try and find us. Our group got bigger and bigger every year. One year a cop stopped me at the Draft and I thought I had done something wrong. Turns out he just wanted to know where he could get a new Dolfans NYC shirt because his old one got damaged in the wash.  

In 2015 the NFL Draft left New York and for the next three years there was no Dolfans NYC representative at the Draft, but in 2018 the NFL introduced something called the “Inner Circle” where a handful of die hard fans from each team would be sat in special seats near the stage where cameras could film them whenever that team would draft a player. The idea was that it would give the team’s biggest fans a great experience while also giving the NFL great footage to use on TV. The Draft was in Dallas that year and half my family lives there so I had a place to stay and Dolfans NYC had a bunch of airline miles so I flew to Dallas, put on as much Dolfans NYC merch as possible and did whatever I could do get Dolfans NYC on TV. I missed the 2019 Draft, but I got on TV for the 2020 virtual Draft. In 2021 I got a chance to go to Cleveland for the Draft. Everyone had to be vaccinated and wear a mask and there were only 12 people allowed per team, but it was still a great experience and I ended up getting interviewed by Slate which was very weird. 

In 2022 the Dolphins managed to trade almost all of their picks to Kansas City and only had one pick during the first two days of the Draft. I probably wouldn’t have gone but unfortunately I booked my ticket to Vegas about a week before the trade so I was kinda stuck. When the Dolphins traded their first round pick I decided not to go to the first day of the Draft and spend it with my girlfriend who had never been to Vegas.

On Day 2 I went down to the Draft a bit early to check out the NFL Experience which features a bunch of different NFL related activations. There are some autograph signings and games where you do football skills and you could see the Vince Lombardi trophy and all the Super Bowl rings. I feel like it would be really fun for a family, but maybe not so much for a middle aged punk rock dude with a herniated disc and torn hip. It’s also pretty much the same stuff as was in Cleveland last year. 

The Draft itself was very Vegas with a bunch of celebrities and Raiders cheerleaders and for some reason Criss Angel.  The famous faces were a good mix of old and new, plus a lot of legendary players. Barry Sanders was a crowd favorite. The older crowd around me were pumped about Donny Osmond but had no idea who MERO (shout out PPP) or Sean Evans were and I am sure the kids there were really happy to see FaZe Rug, Dr. DisRespect and the TikTok duo who I didn’t even recognize. The Dolphins Draft choice was called out by the legendary Larry Csonka who I didn’t photograph because I was too busy cheering for him.  It worked, and once again Dolfans NYC got on the broadcast.

Okay this post is almost 1000 words already and most of you don’t care at all about this so let’s get to the photos, but I do want to mention that I was mostly hanging out and I didn’t have a press pass or anything so I couldn’t bring a long lens so obviously these photos aren’t of the quality they would be if I was actually covering this for work. Still, I hope you enjoy them.

Click here to see all my photos from the 2022 NFL Draft in Las Vegas!

It took a pandemic for me to finally catch up on organizing my photos, but here we are. Obviously I still have 2020 to organize, but let’s just say I don’t think the best of 2020 is going to be a very big update. Not a lot of crazy events or intimate photoshoots happening right now, but I am trying to at least stay productive every day. As per all of these “Best of” updates I am gonna run through a few of my favorite events with some links if you want to check out more but honestly 2019 is mostly just naked people with a handful of events thrown in. I really want to get back into more of the events and journalism but not a great time for that right now. I should probably be out in the street shooting signs of the virus but it feels really selfish of me to risk the lives of my elderly neighbors just so I can take some photos, but maybe I am just a coward and making excuses. Moving on.

Every year my two biggest events are AVN Week and The Gathering of the Juggalos. I also had been to SXSW 14 years in a row but I missed it in 2019. I had my trip booked this year and the festival got canceled less than 24 hours after I bought my plane tickets. At least I got my money back. 

I shot some political stuff, which I would love to do more of like a pro choice protest and an Elizabeth Warren rally. I also shot some stuff for Gothamist including this really cool trash museum. I shot Exxxotica NJ which pretty much looks like AVN so you probably can’t tell the difference and I shot some BTS on my friend’s short film. I somehow just shot a single event for Sailor Jerry, but they did sponsor the #MetLifeTakeover.  Oh and I shot some photos in the snow that I just posted on Twitter or something so didn’t have a proper gallery. 

Honestly that’s it except for a bunch of naked girls. It’s pretty distressing to see now that I look at it all. I had a few corporate jobs that aren’t in here (I did include an outtake from some head shots I shot for a friend), but I really need to be doing more non naked work. But whatever, there are a bunch of nudes and you are probably here for that anyway so rejoice. If you see some photos in here that you haven’t seen before they are probably coming, or maybe I just uploaded them to Girls of DBB and you are too cheap to pay $3 a month to see it. That’s on you.

Okay, let’s move along. I will be back later in the week with some more nudes because apparently that’s all I got. See you soon.

Click here to see the best of 2019.

While in quarantine I have been trying to be productive. I have mostly been eating garbage and watching documentaries about libertarian gay polygamist tiger breeding attempted murderers but I did manage to finally organize all the photos I took in 2018. I actually had to do most of it twice because I accidentally threw away most of the edit but I started over again and here we are. In January I started working on organizing 2019 and then I realized I hadn’t done 2018 yet so at least that’s done and I guess it’s time to work on 2019 now, but let’s be honest, if Netflix drops another true crime series I will immediately drop whatever I was doing. 

Speaking of pandemics, normally I wouldn’t drop nearly 300 photos on a Saturday, but since everyone is stuck at home bored as hell this seems like a perfect time to give you a million photos to click through. I will also go through some of my favorite moments of the year and drop you some links of the highlights so you can go look at more photos or read about some more of my bullshit or whatever.

Let’s start with my favorite photo shoot of all time: I got to shoot the cast of the Wes Anderson movie Isle of Dogs with puppies for Vulture and then puppies dressed up as Wes Anderson characters for BuzzFeed. It was amazing. Some of the bigger events I shot in 2018 were AVN Week, SXSW and of course the Gathering of the Juggalos. I also shot Exxxotica NJ, The March For Our Lives, Elm St. Music & Tattoo Fest and the NFL Draft. Speaking of sports, a personal highlight of 2018 (and my life) was the Washington Capitals winning the Stanley Cup. I didn’t get to go to any of the games but I did get to go to the victory parade in DC. I got to travel overseas a couple of times, getting to photograph a Transylvanian rave, and going to the Galapagos Islands, the latter of which was an absolutely life changing experience. I should also mention that I shot a halloween dog parade and really loved shooting some behind the scenes photos on the TV show Cake.

I know I also gotta run down a few of my favorite naked women photos because that’s why most of you creeps come here. Probably my favorite shoot of the year was of my my friend Scout. There was such bad light in her hotel room that we shot almost the entire thing using just light from the TV. I finally got to shoot with Nikki Hearts after knowing her for years and years. Kasey Warner introduced me to Damia and Khloe, and I photographed both of them for the first time. I have shot them both again since. I got to shoot Rose Ryan for the second time and she is unreasonably attractive so that is worth a gander. I shot Jade Baker for the first time and our second shoot from 2019 is one of my favorites ever. I have no idea why I haven’t posted it yet.  Speaking of galleries I haven’t posted yet, there are a few more previews in here of those including one with Alex De La Flour that is coming real soon. I got some good public nude stuff as well with my shoot with Jane Wilde and my trip to Governors Island with my friend Kirra. Oh, and my shoot with Raya and Goldie was amazing too.

Okay, I think that’s it for now. There’s a ton of other stuff in here too but I am not gonna list it all because I have work to do, and by work I mean I have to go watch some videos of rich teenage YouTubers pulling pranks on their slightly less successful successful YouTuber friends.

Click here to see nearly 300 of my favorite (digital) photos from 2018!

Tonight at 10:30pm EST a new TV show called Cake premieres on FXX after It’s Always Sunny. It’s a weird mix of live action and animation and I mention this because my friends Teddy Blanks and Alex Karpovsky aka The Spielbergs (I shot their press photo) directed a bunch of short episodes of a show called “Oh Jerome, No” that is one of the live action elements of Cake. It’s based on their short film of the same name and it stars Mamoudou Athie as Jerome. If you haven’t seen Patti Cake$ you should probably watch it. He is great in it.

Each episode is a different look into Jerome’s dating life starring a completely different cast (outside of Mamoudou) and each episode is then broken up into pieces inside of the larger Cake episode. I have no idea how it’s going to work, but I am excited to see it. I also know that the Jerome episodes will be also available to watch online as stand alone episodes. 

Jerome filmed mostly in a studio in LA but since it’s supposed to be set in NYC all of the exteriors (and a few interiors) were filmed here so I spent a couple days following the crew around shooting some behind the scenes photos. I only was there for a few hours each day but I think I got some nice shots that you could check out. I honestly really enjoyed doing it and it’s something I would like to do a lot more of in the future. If anyone wants to hire me to hang out on the set of their short film or music video shoot or something let me know. 

Because they were shooting exteriors from several episodes I am not sure what I shot exactly, but I do know the scene with Natasha Lyonne is in the first episode that airs tonight. I got to see it a couple months ago and I really enjoyed it. I am actually in it, but I have a feeling you won’t be able to spot me considering Teddy didn’t even notice until I pointed out my blur in the back of a movie theater. The photos do feature one spoiler from the first episode, but it’s also in the Cake trailer so I don’t think I am giving anything away by posting it. That being said, if you are interested in seeing the show you might want to watch tonight’s episode before looking at these photos or watching the trailer.

Lastly, and completely unrelated to this post Boing Boing finally published my last article from the 2019 Gathering of the Juggalos and I am a huge Boing Boing fan so I figured I would share that with you.

Anyway, go look at these photos and watch Cake tonight at 10:30pm on FXX! See if you can spot me!

Click here to see all my behind the scenes photos from Oh, Jerome No and Cake.

Another year down! My photos from 2016 are properly organized and I have already moved on to 2017 although I am only a couple months in. Here is a gallery of a bunch of my favorite images from 2016 that you get to look at if you want. It’s over 200 images so it should last you a while as I travel to Ohio to take a bunch of photos of juggalos like I do every year. I will be back Sunday with far too many juggalo photos, so rejoice.

Meanwhile, let’s see how quickly I can write about an entire year worth of photos so that I can start packing for this trip. 

There are a ton of girl photos in here (even more than normal) because I had started working on my Instaxxx book towards the end of the year. There was also the release of my book Public and a topless bar crawl to promote it. Some of this girl stuff is unpublished even and I have two galleries from 2016 that still haven’t been posted. Coming soon. (One of them is already on Girls of Driven By Boredom!)

Update: I forgot to go through all the photos from my West Coast Road Trip so there’s a ton pics missing. Sorry.

One of the more impactful moments of 2016 was the night that Prince died. Spike Lee went threw a block party in his honor and I made my way to the front right as they played When Doves Cry and everyone was singing a long. It was a really amazing moment and I uploaded a video to my Instagram and somehow Good Morning America found it and bought it which made the day incredibly bittersweet. Just to keep it depressing, visiting Stonewall after the Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting was incredibly moving for me, and the closing of the bar Jarome’s was another nail in the coffin of downtown NYC nightlife. 

Some events seem to have better photos than others: the Sailor Jerry Fleet Week party, the BBQ Films Ghostbusters party and Fool’s Gold Day Off all have more than their fair share of images in here. One of the weirder things I have covered in my life was the Kid Rock Fish Fry in Nashville (and that’s saying a lot) and even weirder news I got hired to shoot something for Teen Vogue. Oh, and I also shot a halloween party for babies. Seriously. And as always there are a ton of photos from my normal yearly gigs, AVN Awards, SXSW and of course the Gathering of the Juggalos.

Speaking of which, time to go back. See you guys in a few days.

Click here to see a bunch of my favorite photos from 2016.

These “Best of” posts keep coming as I slowly get all my images organized. The 2013 best of gallery was a bit of a turning point though because at some point during 2013 I got a little more organized and so a lot of the work is already done. It goes a lot faster. I am actually done with 2016 too but I will wait to post the best of 2015 first. But, not one bit of this is interesting so let’s start talking about the reason we are here: 2014.

I think I peaked as a photographer in 2014. I lost my favorite client in the middle of 2014 over some shit that I had very little to do with, and then my life sort of detonated in 2015. I have shot a bunch of stuff that I am fairly proud of since then, but looking back at the first half of 2014 I really shot some stuff I loved. My shoot with Raven Rockette at Rock-a-Hoola and my shoot with April O’Neil and Shay Laren at Murphy’s Ranch were two of my favorite shoots of all time and they happened in the same week! 

Some other highlights of 2014 included following Hannibal Buress when he opened up for Aziz Ansari at Madison Square Garden, hanging out with Iggy Pop in Miami, and watching Joey Chestnut propose at the Coney Island hot dog eating contest. I got to shoot Motley Crue from a million miles away on their “last tour” and I got to shoot Miley Cyrus which was surprisingly enjoyable. I shot MIA and a hologram for a tequila and a ton of fun stuff for Sailor Jerry including the Sailor Jerry House at SXSW. 

I shot a ton of stuff for the Village Voice including two of my favorite assignments of all time, Antiques Roadshow and the Westminster Dog Show. I shot some festivals for them as well including 4 Knots, Fool’s Gold Day Off, and of course the Gathering of the Juggalos. The girl I was dating for a bunch of 2014 was a writer for the Voice and we covered a bunch of stuff together, but the one thing we did together that didn’t end up in the Voice was our trip to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. It was so fucking insane. 

I feel like I got a couple more things left to mention before I let you guys get to the 300+ photos. 2014 Art Basel was the last time I went down there after I managed to somehow lose money. It was still a great trip though and I got to see a Dolphins game so I shouldn’t complain too much. I got to shoot John Amos for an article that I don’t think ever ran, but it was great to meet a legend like that. Speaking of legends I also got to shoot Robert Rodriguez, Robert Duvall and a bunch of other actors and directors not named Robert during the SXSW Film Fest including the cast of Silicon Valley. Oh, also I should mention that I shot this Rockabilly convention in Vegas incase you are wondering what all the insane haircuts are all about. Fair warning. 

The one thing I hate about looking back on all these photos is seeing the people I will never see again. The last photo I ever took of Dust La Rock is in this gallery. My really good friend DJ Jess died three years ago this week. I feel like I don’t have a ton of photos of Spam because he was usually behind a bar working but I found a couple and included one in this gallery. My brother from another mother Denny is in this gallery too. Too many people gone.

Lastly, I  should mention that I only found one naked girl gallery I hadn’t published. That’s a good thing because I have way too many that I still need to publish. The one I did find was of a girl named Alison Faye who left the adult industry shortly after we shot and I just never got around to posting them. The set was fairly small anyway, so I just decided to upload the whole thing to Girls of Driven By Boredom so it’s there if you want to see it. 

Okay, now click here look at this massive gallery of the best photos I took in 2014.

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.