Yesterday was the final day of the Gathering of the Juggalos and it was a pretty fun one. Gotta make this update quick though because I drove to Indianapolis instead of editing photos and now I am about to photograph a really hot lady and then go get food with my friend and then edit four days of photos so I can get them to Rolling Stone and Noisey by the time my editors get into work tomorrow. Let’s go.

They day started off with a fantastic surprise. One of my favorite people, Angel Beau, just happened to be performing her strip circus act in Dayton, OH the weekend of the Gathering and so Freakshow Deluxe, one of the sideshow acts at the Gathering, drove to Dayton and grabbed her and had her perform with them. Their sideshow was rad and it was so awesome to see her there even if she was only around for an hour.

Day four also featured more fighting, more Busey Beauties and more bands. Mushroom Head was totally silly up close. Their masks look like mid level halloween masks and there are far too many people running around on their stage. Really weird. Waka Flocka on the other hand was fucking amazing. Juggalos started throwing shit at him and instead of leaving stage like other acts have done at the Gathering he just jumped into the crowd and played several songs while moshing and hugging juggalos. It was awesome. One of the best performances I’ve seen in my life.

Machine Gun Kelly was next and he puts on a great show even if I don’t love his music. Waka Flocka came out for his first song which was pretty great as well. I’ve photographed him backstage at the Woodie Awards, at the AVN Awards and now at the Gathering of the Juggalos. Pretty random. He did leave with all the Busey Beauties I was flirting with, but I guess I can’t blame him…

ICP ended the music portion of the night and as always they put on one of the most insane shows possible. I don’t care what you think of their music or their fans; if you ever get a chance to see them live do it. You will be blown away. They ended with a slow song instead of their usual closer and I guess they gave out Chinese lanterns because during their last song everyone lit them and the sky was filled with them which was fairly epic. Plus someone shot one down with a fire work which was fucking impressive. Juggalos do fucking shit up very well.

After ICP I saw Judah Friedlander’s comedy set which was mostly crowd work and very funny. I think rolled over to the wrestling matches for a second but it was crazy over there so I visited the mythical burrito man one final time and dipped out.

Here are a few photos from yesterday and then starting Monday I will start dropping several updates a day on the main site until you get to see everything I shot at the gathering. Get excited.

UPDATE: Noisey ran my juggalo fight club photos! Go look at them!

Day three of the Gathering of the Juggalos was my take it easy day. There wasn’t anything I actually really cared about photographing. I slept in and got some work done and even published my first article ever that was more writing than photos. Check it out over at Noisey:

WE FOLLOWED ELECTRONIC PUNK RAPPERS HO99O9 TO THEIR FIRST ‘GATHERING OF THE JUGGALOS’ FESTIVAL

So that was cool. I wish people would give me money to write sometimes, not because I am good at it or that it pays well, but writers get a lot more credit for articles. Whenever I collaborate on an article with a writer it instantly becomes their article even if it was my idea and their name is always bigger, etc, etc. Then again they have to do actual work and for the most part get paid even worse than photographers do so maybe fuck it. I don’t know.

Anyway, back to yesterday… The highlight was definitely another bare knuckle boxing match. If you remember Nebraska from last year, he was back and absolutely destroyed a huge dude who looked like he could throw down. They fought two rounds with gloves and any sane ref would have called the fight pretty much instantly but the Wolfpac are not exactly sane and made them take the gloves off after two rounds and the other dude took a hell of a beating. I got some crazy shots.

I only shot one band, Twiztid and I only took like 10 photos of them because I have shot them a million times and only juggalos care about them although they did a collab with Mishka and I sat in on an interview with them and they seem like pretty good dudes.

One of the reasons I didn’t shoot any bands is because I finally got the Gathering of the Juggalos tattoo I have been talking about for years! It was my first tattoo that I ever got while bugs were flying all over me. I just got Whoop Whoop! tattooed to my leg and the guy basically just did it by hand and jammed it in some random spot on my leg. I kinda love it even though some dude on Instagram told me he was unfollowing me because of it. Gonna miss him. 🙁

After Twiztid I went to one of the weird after parties because this insanely hot girl told me she was gonna be dancing there which is one of the few reasons I do anything in life. I took a handful of photos there and then decided to leave so I could get some work done since I gotta be down there kinda early today. On the way out I caught a few minutes of Big Jay Oakerson’s comedy set but he was doing vaguely homophobic sexist and racist jokes which isn’t really my thing cause I am not a bigot. Maybe that’s what he though juggalos would think is funny but he wasn’t exactly killing up there.

I can’t think of anything else interesting that happened yesterday so here’s some random photos of juggalos…

Today I woke up at 2pm which would be more impressive if I didn’t go to bed at 7:30am. The Gathering is beating me but I won’t let it win. I feel almost functional this morning afternoon. Luckily I don’t really have anything I NEED to shoot at the Gathering today. Obviously I need to get down there soon anyway but let me give you a little run down of yesterday.

Since I spent most of Wednesday following around Ho99o9 I didn’t take a lot of photos of actual juggalos so that was a big part of yesterday. I think I got some really nice shots yesterday. After the sun started to go down the light was really nice for a few hours. I also brought a 35mm camera loaded with black and white film out and left my flash in the car.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find my car when I went back to get my flash and ended up missing the first few minutes of Flosstradamus which normally wouldn’t have been a big deal but they kicked all the photographers out of the photo pit before I got there. I have shot Flosstradamus a bunch of times, but never in front of thousands of juggalos. Their set went very well save for one asshole who hit Josh in the face with a rock. Made for a nice visual though…

After Flosstradamus I decided I didn’t need to photograph Dark Lotus for the 6th time and met up with the mythical Burrito Man for a burrito and then went to hang out with Mike Busey and his pack of strippers at the DJ Clay after party. Clay and I seem to have very similar tastes in hip hop and believe it or not I always look forward to his DJ sets. My friend Steak is filming a show for Vice’s new women’s vertical Broadly and apparently one for the HBO Vice show at the same time so she had two camera crews following her around so I hung out with those kids a bunch too.

I said goodbye to the Vice crew and went over to shoot Twista and when I got there they were already there again. Twista was fucking awesome although he didn’t seem to know he was at the Gathering of the Juggalos. He kept giving shout outs to Ohio as if we were all from Thornville.

Oh, I also saw Puddle of Mudd for some reason and I am pretty sure I am falling in love with about 6 of Busey’s Beauties. Perhaps it’s the body glitter… Everyone likes shiny things.

Here’s a few highlights and will be back with much, much more soon.

Back from SXSW and I got to sleep in a real bed for 8 straight hours and it was amazing. The road trip blog is shutting down again until the next time. I hope to get all my SXSW stuff up on the main blog starting later tonight and going through the weekend. There’s a lot to get up.

In the mean time I wanted to end the blog with a preview of the shoot I did with a girl named Isabel who I met randomly at Hotel Vegas after photographing Thee Oh Sees. She ended up coming to the party I was shooting later that night and hit me up to apologize for her friend who got too drunk and got kicked out. I told her that it wasn’t a big deal and also mentioned that if she every wanted to take photos I was down.

So on my last day in Austin I went to the fucking rodeo, which was insane, and then I got back to my friend Mike’s place at around 11pm and Isabel came over an we took a bunch of photos in the vintage trailer that Mike’s roommate owns. I think they came out pretty well especially for photos of a girl who’s never really modeled and considering it was midnight and we were using just the ambient light of the trailer.

Here’s a nice reasonably safe for work shot, and a few naked ones on my Tumblr.

It’s finally over. It’s really fucking finally over. I ended my SXSW in ideal fashion last night by seeing just my third band of the whole festival when I shot the amazing Ho99o9 last night. I am still in Austin for two more days but I am just gonna be relaxing and eating BBQ. Perhaps going to the rodeo? Yeah that’s a real thing.

Anyway, I can finally talk about the parties I was shooting this week. I was working for Sailor Jerry as per always and they threw a bunch of secret parties that had more of a lounge vibe than the rest of SXSW. They had bands DJ instead of playing music and there were a lot of couches and free drinks. It was sort of an ideal way to deal with the madness that is SXSW.

The last two nights we had Lust For Youth, the Spits, Ice Age and Andy Animal Djing and we had some good people stop by. In between the two parties I got to shoot my friend and muse Erica for the first time in years time which was amazing. Plus the photos are way sexier than the really fun ones we took at Disney World!

I was really glad not to have to see a billion bands at SXSW because I always get completely burnt out, but I did miss the chance to find that one or two bands that blow me away every year. Fortunately my buddy Eaddy’s band Ho99o9 was playing right next to the Sailor Jerry house at the We Are Family showcase. I kept hearing so much great shit about them and they completely lived up to the hype. Eaddy is honestly one of the best frontmen I’ve ever seen and the other dude is fucking great too. I wanna go on tour with these dudes. It would be amazing shots every night but I am 100% I would break my camera because when they covered Attitude by Bad Brains I totally forgot I had my camera in my hand and just got in the pit.

Anyway, here are a few highlights from the last two days. I will probably update this Road Trip blog once more before returning to reality and updating my site as per normal. I got a lot of images to get up…

Music week is in full swing and I have been working parties I can’t really talk about until after they are over. Whatever the case, last night was a ton of fun and I have a feeling tonight is going to be a blast as well. Plus I have legitimately nothing to do until 9pm tonight and that fucking rules.

I did take some pictures of Thee Oh Sees and my friend Justin’s band the Residuals at Hotel Vegas yesterday but other than that I have completely managed to avoid seeing any bands this week which is precisely the plan. Not that there aren’t a few bands I want to see but every year I get so burnt out from SXSW so it’s nice to try to just chill out a bit.

Anyway, here are some highlights from the last two days… Pics from the Sailor Jerry gallery, Hotel Vegas and two parties that aren’t that secret but I would get yelled at for talking about. If you want to come by tonight though just let me know and I can list you.

St. Patrick’s Day is probably my least favorite holiday for all the reasons that are obvious. Luckily yesterday was a good time despite attempts by drunk morons in all green.

I spent most of yesterday working for the Robert Duvall film Wild Horses. It was pretty good timing since I didn’t have anything else going on yesterday. I shot the red carpet for them and shot the after party which was a lot of fun. Robert Duvall and Josh Hartnett took photos with nearly every single person there and there were a ton of cowboys there which was pretty amazing. Matthew Mcconaughey’s brother Rooster was the star of the party though and is a pretty hilarious dude.

After that I moved all my stuff across Austin so I could check into the Sailor Jerry house. They are doing a pop up art gallery featuring original art from Normal “Sailor Jerry” Collins. It opens tomorrow but I get to go over there in a bit and I am excited to check it out. Check out the flyer below for details.

My friend Erica then picked me up from the SJ house and we got some tacos and caught up. She is pretty much my favorite person to photograph of all time and honestly one of my favorite people to hang out with and it sucks that I haven’t seen her in years. Fortunately she moved to Austin so I get to take photo of her face again.

We also saw Hello, My Name is Dorris which was great but then I had to get her to bring me back to the Sailor Jerry House to write captions for 84 photos for my 2015 “Famous Faces of SXSW” gallery on the Village Voice and LA Weekly. I also noticed my SXSW Gaming Convention photos are up too so check out both galleries!

And now here are a few highlights from yesterday plus the Sailor Jerry Gallery flyer…

Yesterday was my chillest day at SXSW in probably 6 years. I even watched some hockey and took a nap. It was magical.

I awoke feeling exhausted and fucking horrible and the coffee, energy drink and caffeine pill. I had within an hour of being awake didn’t help very much. I got a Lyft over to the Gibson guitar showroom where they were setting up a Tower Records themed party to promote the documentary All Things Must Pass about the downfall of Tower Records. There I photographed director Colin Hanks and producer Sean Stuart.

After that I went back down town and shot Jason Schwartzman for the second time this week. This time for his movie 7 Chinese Brothers. Then I walked over to the Intercontinental Hotel for the third straight day, this time to shoot the cast and crew of Manson Family Values headlined by producers the Duplass Brothers Mark and Jay. It’s actually the third time I have photographed Mark Duplass at SXSW and the second time I photographed him laying down. Finally I ended the day shooting the cast and director of the film Babysitter.

I had a few hours to kill before I was supposed to shoot the Get Hard red carpet but I hadn’t slept in days and I was feeling horrible. I had a head ache and felt like I was getting sick. I decided to go back and start editing photos and rest. I started watching some hockey and fell asleep and woke up about an hour later feeling so much better. It was sort of spectacular.

I went back out but the whole thing was pretty uneventful aside from eating pancakes with Quinn Cornchip and taking a few random topless photos of her before she dropped me off.

Just one more day of film left and then it’s on to music week. Enjoy some highlights from yesterday.

Hopefully this update is going to be a lot shorter than yesterday because I need to watch the last episode of Jinx before the internet ruins everything for me. Anyway yesterday was a pretty good time. I saw a couple of good movies, took some photos, photographed a gaming convention and went to a pretty fun party.

First up I shot the cast/ crew of Fresno which happened really quickly in a slightly too cold place. I loved the film and I love all the actresses involved and I am fairly bummed that I didn’t kill it like I should have. But Natasha Lyonne did Tweet a photo of me taking a photo of Aubrey Plaza which was kinda fun. I would also like to mention that I think Judy Greer is an incredibly underrated actress. She is brilliant always.

From there I had the super low key assignment of photographing two Oscar award winning actors in ten minutes. First I shot Adrian Brody for his film Stone Barn Castle (a documentary about the 7 years it took him to restore a castle!) and then Robert Duvall for his new film Wild Horses. I have shot Duvall now three times and it doesn’t stop being amazing and I actually got hired to shoot photos at the Wild Horses premiere and after party.

I then shot the red carpet for the film Love & Mercy about Brian Wilson. I actually had seen a bit of the film because my friend Teddy did the credits and it looks really great. I didn’t get to see it but I did get to photograph Brian Wilson and John Cusack (who plays older Brian Wilson) so that was awesome.

Next I hit the SXSW Gaming Convention and saw over a hundred people watch some kids play Street Fighter. It was insane. They had announcers and everything. I just had never shot the convention and I love photographing hardcore fans of anything and nerds go all out. I honestly had a great couple of hours doing that weirdness.

Finally the moment I was most pumped for, I got to see A Wonderful Cloud the film edited by my brother. It was directed by my brother’s friend Eugene who is a really intense and awesome dude and it stars Eugene and Kate Lyn Sheil who I have sort of become friends with after photographing her so many times at SXSW. The film also featured credits by Teddy because Teddy kills it always. The movie was great at the most accessible thing I have seen from Eugene. I would very much recommend it unless you get offended easily and since you are on my website that is probably not the case.

I ended my photographing by hitting the red carpet for Paul Feig’s new film Spy featuring Melissa McCarthy. Jason Statham, Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale were on the carpet as well. I got to see Spy since I was done for the day and it was pretty fucking hilarious. But you don’t need me to tell you to see it.

The night ended with the after party for A Wonderful Cloud and that was a lot of fun but I didn’t really take any photos so yeah. Look at a few highlights below. All my film stuff should be up on the Village Voice/ LA Weekly on Wednesday.