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. 

When I was on the West Coast last month I was really busy hanging out with family and doing vacation type stuff with my girlfriend and I didn’t take a lot of photos, but I did want to try and do a couple shoots while I was out there. I did one mini shoot with my friend Krystall but we only shot 35mm photos and didn’t do a full set (although there are some photos & a video on my OnlyFans). But I did one proper shoot with my friend Jess who goes by Junkyard Rat on the internet. 

Jess and I have shot a bunch in the past but literally every time we have shot it’s just been some random weirdness in the middle of the night. I have such crazy photos of her but this is the first time we did a proper shoot. The other thing my shoots with Jess have in common is that every time it’s been with one of her friends. For example she introduced me to both Pouty Kitty and Leigh Mercury. So I joked to her that she needed to bring a friend to the shoot and she actually did, her roommate Daria Bank. Daria was a semi retired model who decided to jump into our shoot and she was rad and super photogenic and I feel like we got some really pretty stuff. We also shot some slightly more fucked up stuff but we will save that for a book or something one day. 

I don’t have a lot more to say about this, other than once again the NSFW stuff is behind a paywall because my galleries are still broken. I do have an idea for a new version of Driven By Boredom but I am gonna need to hire someone to build it and I just don’t have that kind of money so we are kinda at a stalemate. Maybe I will relearn how to code websites, it’s only been 20 years since I could do them from scratch. So yeah, photos are on Girls of DBB and the 35mm stuff and some video are up on the OnlyFans. 

Okay, now click here to see all the photos of Junkyard Jess and Daria Bank!

I haven’t photographed an party in ages and when my friend Ellen Stagg hit me up about shooting an event for her the day I came back from two weeks on the West Coast I was a little hesitant for a number of reasons. First one is of course my back injury and doing event work is really tough, the second was that I just don’t really shoot with a flash anymore and I  knew I would need to if I was going to shoot her party and the third was that the event was to celebrate her photo making the cover of a certain magazine that once threw me into a lawsuit that I had almost nothing to do with but still cost me tens of thousands of dollars to get out of. Still, I love Ellen and I wanted to support her and as I have been going through my archives for my Vintage Driven By Boredom instagram I have been really missing shooting parties which is not something I ever expected. So I said yes to the gig and broke out my old DSLR and shot the party like I would have a decade ago. I was worried the shots wouldn’t be great so I actually wouldn’t let Ellen pay me until the end of the night because I wanted to make sure I a) didn’t fuck up and b) was able to shoot the whole thing without my back falling apart, but an hour in I realized that I still kinda knew what I was doing and I was able to take enough breaks to make it through despite some pretty excruciating pain at times. Anyway, this whole paragraph is just me complaining about stuff so let’s get into the actual party!

The party was pretty much a book signing with Ellen and cover model Laura Desiree selling magazines and signing them all night. You’d think that would be a pretty boring thing to shoot, but I knew better than that. The party was at The Museum of Sex’s event area, Super Funland which is a mix between a carnival, an art exhibit and the Korova Milk Bar from A Clockwork Orange. There is a slide from upstairs that people can take that shoots them out of what is essentially a giant vagina into the middle of the party which was honestly delightful. There was also a dancer named Ruby Quinn who absolutely killed it doing killer pole tricks and giving me something to photograph all night. Also Ellen and Laura are tremendous babes and have a lot of fun to photograph friends which made for easy work on my end. Got to see some old friends and finally met Connie Perignon who I have known via the internets for a couple of years, but never actually ran into IRL. Someone did try and fight me for absolutely no reason in the middle of the party, but honestly I kinda miss that kinda thing too. A younger me would have done some stupid shit, but I am an adult now so I just went back to taking photos. 

Anyway, the whole thing was a blast and I really appreciate Ellen and Laura bringing me out and I hope I can shoot some more parties in the future. I didn’t realize I missed it. Also hopefully I met some people that I can photograph in the future, and I only mention this as an excuse to promote my OnlyFans. Listen, a man has gotta eat. I also should mention that this gallery is once again on Flickr because my website is just permanently broken and I haven’t really figured out a good solution for that, but hopefully I will in the not too distant future, especially if I get back into shooting nightlife a little bit. At least the photos are in higher resolution over there… 

Now click here to see all the photos from Ellen Stagg & Laura Desiree magazine signing at the Museum of Sex!

Today is the 22nd anniversary of Driven By Boredom. Before there were blog platforms and YouTube and even reliable image hosting, I wanted a place where I could put all of my projects so I wouldn’t have to email them to my friends individually. I was taking photos, shooting video, doing other random projects and just whatever I could do to keep myself entertained while I was in college.

The site became a very successful early blog until I started managing a band and I barely updated the site for a couple of years. I was still getting a surprising amount of traffic and when I moved to NYC in 2006 people kept asking me where I was putting my photos. I figured I still had my site so I might as well use it. My friend’s Adam and Thadd helped me build a new WordPress template and sometime in 2007 DBB was born again and was updated very consistently until the pandemic and a back injury and the fact that my site is barely functional (as it was last redesigned in 2007) has slowed my updates, but we are still here!

Over the years I have celebrated the anniversary in a lot of different ways, from wild parties, to free tattoos, to NFTs, to completely forgetting about it, but in 2009 I really went overboard. I had just started doing photography full time, my site was popping and I even had an intern (who got arrested for stealing someone’s purse during one of the anniversary parties). When that 8th anniversary showed up I had to do it big. 

I started by offering free Driven By Boredom tattoos, threw three parties, and released a t-shirt that I gave away for free at the events. Two people took me up on the tattoos (if you include myself, 14 people have gotten DBB tattoos over the years), we probably gave out 100 shirts and all three parties were a blast. 

Over the past few months I launched VintageDBB on Instagram. It’s a flashback to these days, primarily from 2007 to 2009 right now, but I am slowly moving forward in my archives and occasionally pulling newer and older stuff. It’s been so much fun to do, and people seem to love it, but I have soooo much stuff on there that I will never get to it all. So I had the idea of doing throwback posts on here where I go pull whole events and post them on this site, in higher resolution and without my old giant MySpace era watermarks. 

I figured today would be a perfect start so I went through all three 8th anniversary parties and pulled some highlights, about 15 photos in total. The parties included were, Disco Down at Happy Ending, Playhouse at Cain and Trash at Webster Hall. All three were pretty insane so I hope you enjoy this flashback.

My site is still broken, and will probably never be fixed so photos are on Flickr until I find a better solution. 

Click here to see the highlights from three parties celebrating the 8th anniversary of DBB in 2009.

Ps. Go follow @VintageDBB!

Last week I shot photos of Aliya Brynn who was visiting NYC for a week. I pretty much immediately edited them and uploaded them in high res to Girls of DBB, but I forgot to do a post about it on here because I hate my website and the gallery system is broken and I honestly just can’t afford to fix it so it will just languish here until one day I win the lottery or something. 

As far as the shoot goes, NY hotel rooms are the worst and it had this tiny window and shit light but we made it work by just taking her photo close to the bed. I actually think we took some really nice 35mm shots but I haven’t developed the film yet so it’s all a mystery. I am actually going to drop most of it off as soon as I finish this post. 

These photos are extra NSFW. You guys know I don’t shoot a lot of overly sexualized images, and I think that’s why some of you enjoy my work, but I also believe when photographing a model it should be collaborative and obviously sex sells and we both got OnlyFans to run. Speaking of which, there’s some video from this shoot on my OnlyFans, and there will be more soon. So yeah, very NSFW photos. 

Okay, now I gotta go drop off some film. Sponsor a roll here and get a cheap print, maybe even one from this shoot.

Click here to see the paywalled photos (sorry) from my shoot with Aliya Brynn. 

In 2014 I was in LA and I took a ton of photos. On one specific day I photographed three models, including Skin Diamond. I had been friends with Skin for several years at this point, and we had done a mini shoot the year before at AVN but we had never shot one on one. I went over to her place and I think we ended up going to the grocery store, because I have a photo of her flashing me in a Trader Joe’s elevator or some reason, but I really don’t even remember that day. What I do remember is that it was my third shoot of the day, and that’s why you are just seeing these photos now, eight years later. 

Eight years ago I didn’t use photoshop at all. These days, just due to how my current camera sensor works, I basically do some very minimal leveling stuff and some occasional color correction, but I am very bad at it. In 2014 I was even worse. When we shot these, it was night time so there was no light except the natural light of her room and when I got the photos back they looked terrible. I remember talking to a photographer friend of mine about it and she offered to color correct them for me so I sent her the photos and then she just never did it and months went by and I forgot about them, which brings me to reason #2 for their delay. These photos were in a folder with two other models photos, so when I was looking for unpublished work, I saw that I had published the two other women’s sets, and didn’t see the Skin photos because the folder name was too long. It was so dumb. 

So fast forward to 2022 and I am going through my old 35mm images for both my OnlyFans and my new Vintage DBB instagram account and I came across that photo of skin flashing me in Trader Joe’s. I suddenly remembered I had this unpublished shoot with her, I went back and found it and tried my best to make these photos look halfway decent. I failed, but Skin is so hot that it absolutely doesn’t matter. I think you are going to dig these photos a lot. 

Now we get to the next issue, which is my website gallery system is still broken. The problem is, I don’t actually know how to fix it, and this website hasn’t been updated since 2008 and I hate it and I just want to maybe scrap the whole thing and start over but I don’t have the money to pay someone to build me a new site, so we are just in a holding pattern. I was just using Flickr as a temporary gallery solution but Flickr doesn’t like nudity anymore so these photos are exclusive to my pay site. I know that sucks, because I like giving you mostly free nudes and then paywalling the really NSFW stuff but, my pay sites are really cheap and they are pretty much paying my rent while I figure out what to do with my life with a disability that I worry is maybe permanent, because none of the physical therapy has helped.  So yeah, these photos are very NSFW because I was shooting for Hustler at the time and I would have pitched these to them but for the whole never getting edited thing, so they are more sexual than I would shoot for my personal work. 

Now click here to see the unpublished photos of Skin Diamond from 2014 and many, many more NSFW photos. 

Not sure if you noticed but my life has changed significantly in the last few years. I am injured and wifed up and spending more of my time looking back at old images than making new ones. Don’t worry, I got plenty more to shoot, but I am not exactly upset with my new middle aged life. That’s why instead of bringing you some crazy Halloween party photos, I got some photos of pumpkins carved into art taken in upstate New York where I went with my girlfriend so we could drink hot apple cider and eat apple cider donuts and buy a new magnet to add to our fridge. It was great. 

I actually had no idea what we were going to see. My girlfriend just told me to bring my camera, so I did and now because of it, you guys get to see a bunch of photo of pumpkins. The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze happens every year in the Hudson Valley in upstate NY at Van Cortlandt Manor. It’s about an hour from us in Brooklyn. It’s honestly insane what they can do with pumpkins. A bunch of stuff was carved into fake pumpkins that I am guessing they reuse from year to year but my girlfriend went a few years ago and she said most of it was different. A lot of the pumpkins are real though and were barely showing signs of age. It’s all very impressive. I particularly enjoyed the MoPA (Museum of Pumpkin Art) where they had art by Koons and Calder and Warhol and many more made out of pumpkins.

This is a pretty quick update, but wanted to drop a few links on you. First of all, I have started a new Instagram account. I told you I was looking back at old images, it’s because I started @VintageDBB, a selection of my party photos from 2006-2012. Most of the stuff I am posting right now is from 2007 but I am working my way forward. I post several times a day. The other thing I wanted to mention is that I had to do a new Juggalo NFT drop for Halloween since spooky season is year around for psychopathic clowns. Okay, that’s it. On to the photos!

Click here to see my photos from the 2022 Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor.

I realize that two Miami Dolphins themed updates in a row is not what you are looking for from me, but it’s just a coincidence. Our video from our event last year came out like 10 months late and now I have new photos from you from last weekend so here we are with back to back posts about Dolfans NYC, the charity I helped found around watching football games. 

The main event of the year is the #MetLifeTakeover, a gathering of Dolphins fans centered around the Dolphins annual trip to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to play the Jets. We do a party the night before the game and then we throw a huge tailgate party and we organize big blocks of seats so everyone can watch the game together. This year we had our biggest year yet with over 1400 people sitting together. 

During the two day event we did a series of raffles and fundraisers and ended up raising close to $7000 for charity and that doesn’t include the money we make off the event and the merch we sell. This year we have already donated over $10,000 to different causes. It’s honestly one of my favorite things I do if life, even if the Dolphins cause me so much pain. 

I don’t need to go on an on about this but you can look at some photos if you want. I still haven’t fixed my site because I don’t know how to fix it so we are stuck with Flickr, and since I already put these on the Dolfans NYC Flickr I am just gonna link to that gallery. 

These pictures aren’t my finest work because I was throwing a massive event while I was taking them, and just shot some stuff here and there, but it’s still pretty exciting to see how many people showed up to a tailgate in New Jersey.

Click here to see the photos from the 2022 #MetLifeTakeover.

I can’t believe this is my final Gathering of the Juggalos post this year. I don’t know what you guys are going to do with your lives now, but I am sure we can figure it out together. The last day my back was really killing me and I had a friend show up so it was my least productive day at the festival but I still have 100 photos for you and we can do a little wrap up of all my content from my 12th trip to Juggalo Island.

I got down to the Legend Valley campgrounds in the middle of the afternoon, but I spent probably my first hour there just sitting on a rock. I really pushed myself the day before and my back was really hurting. I honestly didn’t think I was going to make it. One of the other photographers came by and told me the Miss Juggalette pageant was happening in a few minutes and as much as I hate shooting in that tent, it seemed like something I could do without standing up. I didn’t shoot a ton of it, I got there late and I left early, but the stuff I did see will haunt me forever. The talent contest involved everything from spoken word poetry to gymnastics to putting safety pins on their vagina to making themselves squirt on the stage with an umbrella to singing and riding a unicycle. A well rounded bunch for sure. Also one of my favorite parts was the juggalette who did the poetry decided to cover herself in ranch dressing during the swimwear competition. The photos are WAY too NSFW to post on here so you can see them all on Girls of Driven By Boredom. I posted a few here for free so you can get a little taste, but yeah you need to check that site for the crazy ones. There’s a couple video clips on my OnlyFans as well. 

After the Miss Juggalette contest I met up with my friend Roach who was in town. I hadn’t seen her in a minute and it’s always great to hang out with people when they experience the insanity of the Gathering for the first time so I walked around with her and her friend and they immediately got into some weird shit and I found out Ro gave herself an ICP tattoo so I feel like they were doing the Gathering right, even though they only came for one day. I am sure they will be back. They ended up going to the haunted house thing, so I went over to the hot dog eating contest, which I honestly should have competed in. I have won many an eating challenge in my day and the ICP hot dog themed hockey jersey they gave out for first place was incredible. I deserved that. 

By that time it was main stage music time and I ran over to catch Slick Rick. I listened to a TON of Slick Rick when I was in high school and I was really excited to see him. I have seen so many old school rappers at the Gathering and it’s honestly one of my favorite parts. That being said, Slick Rick gave one of the laziest performances I have ever seen. He barely moved and just looked so bored. He had a big throne he sat on which was kinda great and he’s Slick Rick so he can do whatever the fuck he wants. At some point juggalos started throwing things at him and he actually got really into it towards the end of his set. I think the measure of a man is how he acts when a half full can of Faygo goes flying past his head and Rick The Ruler passed that test. Also I should cut him some slack because there was some sound difficulties which brings me to KRS ONE. 

KRS is one of my favorite musicians of all time. I have seen him close to 10 times live and it’s always amazing. He rocked it as hard as the first time I saw him more than  twenty years ago. Even his sound check freestyle was incredible. Once I saw him freestyle for 30 minutes while he was selling t-shirts in his booth after the show. He just never stopped. Eventually I just had to leave because the DC Metro stops running at midnight. He’s really one of the best live performers ever. His set at the Gathering really had some sound issues though, and it impacted everything, but KRS has been doing this shit for 40 years and handled it really well. It’s just a bummer they couldn’t get it figured out. If you get a chance to see KRS ONE, do it. 

Finally it was time for the Insane Clown Posse. They did a deep cuts set on the first night but I didn’t make it in time for that. They always end the festival and it’s always a blast. I have seen them so many times and it’s still so much fun to shoot them even if I end up covered in diet Faygo. They are the hardest band to photograph, but the easiest band to get lucky with a great shot. They are another artist that you should see once in your life even if you don’t like their music. It’s just an insane experience. They are semi retired because Violent J has heart problems, and I think not playing was good for them. They looked legitimately happy to be out there which has not always been the case even when they put on a good show. For some reason they didn’t kick us out of the pit after three songs so I actually got to shoot until I got really soaked and decided I should leave because I didn’t have another pair of pants (I’ve lost 30 lbs in the last three months and none of my old pants fit me). So because I got to shoot more than three songs there are more ICP shots than I normally have. There are also a couple shots of Taji Ameen getting sprayed who was filming his show Better Man for Vice. I am very excited to see that episode.

Okay so yeah, that is the 2022 Gathering of the Juggalos. I ended up doing okay despite my back injury. Maybe I didn’t get as many shots as in the past, but this was the first year in a while that I went by myself so I think that helped me be a bit more productive during a shorter window of time. I got some shots I am very happy with (five of which are already for sale as NFTs) and I didn’t do any permanent damage to myself (I hope). To see everything I shot you are going to need to go to a few different sites but all the links are below. And to see all my Gathering content over the last decade plus you can click here to see every post tagged with Gathering of the Juggalos. 

• The Daily Beast
• Brooklyn Vegan
• Driven By Boredom Part 1
• Driven By Boredom Part 2
• Girls Of DBB
• OnlyFans
• Juggalo NFTs

And now for the final chapter of 2022….

Click here to see all the photos from Day 4 of the 2022 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, Ohio.