My SXSW trip got off to an interesting start when I got to the airport and they needed volunteers to fly a day late. I didn’t have too much going on Friday and they were offering a ton of money so I took it and left on Friday instead of Thursday. That meant I got to sleep in a bed one more day and go with my lady to get Friday the 13th tattoos in NYC. When I go to Austin Friday night my friend Keith Underwood was still doing HIS Friday the 13th tattoo and I got a second one. Two in one day. Not bad.

I had some catching up to do and the film fest was in full swing. I ended up shooting portraits of the cast/crew of seven films and I shot three red carpets.

I started out shooting the Ross brothers, directors of the documentary Western who I had missed on Friday because of my delayed flight. After that I shot Judith Godrèche and Jason Schwartzman for the film The Overnight and shot the cast of Creative Control in the street across from their premier at the Ritz. Creative Control starred two musicians I run into all the time, Reggie Watts and the homie Heems formerly of Das Racist.

Heems and I both needed our SXSW badges so he and I hit the convention center and then I shot some more photos of him before I left him to go visit my friends at Indie PR to grab shots of three of their movies Ava’s Possessions, Excess Flesh and Lamb.

From there I hit the press junket for The Final Girls and got to shoot the director and a ton of the cast in the bar/restaurant behind where they were doing press interviews. It was quite the challenge to find eight different looks in a restaurant with almost no natural light but fortunately the cast was made up of nothing but hilarious and/or pretty people. Seriously, it was an impressive group of people.

After that I was done with my set up shoots and hit the red carpets. I went over to the premier of Michael Showalter’s new movie Hello, My Name Is Doris. It starred Sally Field and she seems like the nicest human ever. After the carpet I left to say hi to my brother and when I came back 20 minutes later she was still outside signing autographs. I didn’t get to see the movie because I had to head to the Fresno red carpet. I didn’t want to shoot the carpet so much as just see the movie since I have a shoot scheduled with them this morning. The film was great and starred nothing but hilarious babes in Judy Greer, Natasha Lyonne and Aubrey Plaza. More on that tomorrow.

Lastly I ended the night shooting the red carpet for Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut Lost River and then eating a massive amount of Taco Bell and heading back to my buddies couch to edit pictures and write this stuff that you are reading right now.

I have (at least) four films and two red carpets today plus I get to see A Wonderful Cloud which was edited by my little brother and hero Benjamin Moses Smith.  Got some good stuff coming so get excited.

Here are some shots from the day. More will be posted on my Tumblr… 

Okay, technically SXSW starts Friday but I am packing and getting my shit together so I can leave tomorrow. It’s my 12th year in a row in the Austin festival and I seen it change in ways I cannot imagine. The film festival is still my favorite part and I will be shooting portraits of actors and directors and stuff from Friday until Tuesday. Hopefully I will get to see a bunch of movies too.

Every year I do a “Famous Faces of SXSW” gallery for the Voice Media papers (Village Voice, LA Weekly, etc) and this year I have a bunch of great shoots lined up. In preparation for the trip I put together a gallery of my favorite SXSW Film portraits from the last few years.

Check out the gallery and then come back every day starting Friday for daily updates with the new photos from my SXSW trip!

Click here to see my favorite SXSW Film Portraits!

Last night I had photos in Love//War the art show about conflict at MAMA Gallery in LA (Curated by Mint&Serf and Paperwork NYC). It was an amazing show with amazing artists and there was an amazing turnout. When the gallery first got really packed I looked at my phone and it was 7:03pm. The show started at 7. It was packed all night long and I assume people who didn’t hang photos of dead birds and crackheads probably sold some artwork. I of course only like putting completely unsellable work in galleries so I have a feeling I wasn’t so lucky.

When I get back to NYC expect a full write up but for now you can just look at photos. I didn’t shoot a ton because I had a lot of friends there and I was just hanging out, but I took enough that you can get the idea of the thing.

Oh, and this blog Drunken Stepfather ran a bunch of my Vegas photos. I uploaded most of the stuff I shot in Vegas to Girls of Driven By Boredom and you can get 10% with the code “stepfather” for the next week.

Now click here to check out the photos from the Love//War opening at MAMA Gallery in DTLA.

I need to make this update super fast. I am going to do a proper update on the main DBB page with a write up about the AVN Awards and the Adult Entertainment Expo but I just wanted you guys to have the galleries now because it’s taken me way too long to get them up. They are already on the Village Voice though…

In other news the LA Art Book Fair is tomorrow and I got copies of my super limited zine “Fuck LA” today. I put just five copies online so if you want a copy buy one right now or come to the LA Art Book Fair!

Okay now click here to see the gallery of 2015 AVN Award Pictures!

And click here to see the 2015 gallery of Adult Entertainment Expo pictures!

I have slept about 3 hours a night for the past five days. I haven’t exactly had a ton of time to update this, even quick blasts. I took the day off and tried to get a little sleep and have been editing (and captioning) photos for the past four or five hours. Good times. I want to get all my photos from the Adult Entertainment Expo and the AVN Awards up as soon as possible but I don’t think I am going to be able to do it today. So here are some more previews of upcoming stuff…

My trip got sort of fucked up because my friend Ronen got pick pocketed by a couple and their chihuahua puppy. I spent one night filing reports and then the next day trying to get the phone back. Ronen tracked the phone down to this mildly terrifying project and there were cops arresting someone as we were pulling up. Apparently they were on their way to a domestic disturbance in the complex while someone robbed a convenient store. They told us they couldn’t help because they had five cases in that area to deal with. They told us to call the cops.  We actually saw the people who stole it and Ronen confronted them and after a bunch of back and forth they actually told us to look under some rocks and the phone was there. Slightly damaged but working. Fucking insane.

Aside from that I have been shooting a ton of girls. Unfortunately I didn’t have a lot of location options so I shot pretty much everyone in the parking deck of the hotel or this one lockable bathroom I found. I did shoot Ava Dalush at my hotel so that stuff is really lovely but the rest is mostly just kinda grungy fun stuff in public places. Here are some highlights… more coming soon obviously.

I have been in Vegas for about a day and I have taken some pretty fun photos. Unfortunately it was all after dark so it’s been all flash stuff. No natural light really. Still, I think you are going to dig some of this stuff.

I headed down to the Adult Entertainment Expo and I took a few photos there after I got my credentials and then I went to check in to my hotel. By the time I got back down to the Hard Rock it was getting dark but I ended up shooting my old friend Samantha Bentley. In the middle of our shoot Dahlia Sky showed up so we took a bunch of photos with her too and then my friend Ronen took photos of the three of us.

After that I tried to shoot Adriana Chechik again but she was doing a podcast so Sam and I went up there and ended up on the Porn Directors Podcast. When it was over I took a few photos of Sam, Adriana and Belle Noire who actually retired from porn but was in town with Adriana and doing make up for girls at the convention.

By the time that was over it was pretty late but I ran into some Burning Angels  and snuck out to the parking garage to shoot a handful of photos with Veronica Rose and Taurus.

After that I put my digital camera away but took some more film stuff at parties and around the Hard Rock so I might have some more cool stuff.

Here are a few preview images to hold you over!

SXSW is over! I survived! I took the last day pretty easy as it was raining in the early afternoon and I think everyone in Austin was taking it down a notch after an insane couple of weeks. Residuals, Cosmonauts and White Mystery played again and I ate a donut burger with bacon and eggs.

The big thing of the day was Oliver Peck tattooing 3/5ths of the Dum Dum Girls. Those kids are pretty rad and we took a bunch of fun photos. I shot them live too of course!

Another highlight was seeing Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys do Sonic Reducer live.

The night ended with some darker music with bands like Sisu (featuring some Dum Dums) Youth Code and King Dude. I also stopped by Hotel Vegas next door to see my girls in Habibi.

It has been an exhausting and fun week. I am glad it’s over but I can’t wait to do it all over again next year!  Now it’s time to take a few days to enjoy Austin without the SXSW madness. Should be fun…

Today is the last day of SXSW. Nine days that I was pretty sure were going to destroy my life. I am still alive but I still have one more 14 hour day at the Sailor Jerry House before it’s all over. I also don’t get back to NYC until Tuesday and I am not exactly sure where I am staying or what I am doing until then. Should be interesting.

Anyway, yesterday was another fun day at Gypsy Lounge. Lot’s more free tattoos with Keith Underwood and Philip LaRocca doing dozens and dozens of small Sailor Jerry tattoos. Oliver Peck tattooed a ton of people as well including Big Freedia and my girl Alysha Nett.

On the music side there was good stuff all day including the night time Cultist/Blundertown party that was pretty punk rock all night long. The day party highlight was Fat White Family that featured a dude getting pretty much naked and rolling around in the dirt. My kinda jam. At night I got to see my girls the Coathangers again and it was headlined by a Coach Whips reunion. Coach Whips (fronted by Thee Oh See’s John Dwyer) haven’t played in nearly 10 years and they fucked shit up so hard. It was amazing and I got to shoot the whole show from on stage right behind them as they played in the crowd.

Here are a few photo highlights. One more of these wrap ups tomorrow and then I will start getting this stuff organized so that when I get back to NYC I will be able to start getting the thousands of SXSW photos I have taken over the last 10 days or so…

I have no time at all today to write about yesterday but the Black Bell records party happened at the Sailor Jerry House so let’s see how few words I can explain yesterday in. Don’t worry, there will be more on this once I get back to NYC.

I started the day by getting a big tattoo from Oliver Peck. After that took the afternoon a bit slow but things insane by the end of the night. The day time highlight was Team Spirit but the madness really started in the evening with The Lovely Bad Things. They were fantastic. This super weird two man male model band The Garden played shortly after them and kinda blew my mind. See them if you get a chance. There was some punk rock awesomeness with the So So Glows after that and then in perfect closing fashion Diarrhea Planet destroyed everything.

Diarrhea Planet is a pretty horrible name (who am I to judge, my band is called Fucking Bullshit) but they were fucking amazing. They have four guitar players and to open the set they brought The Lovely Bad Things on stage and to close it they had the So So Glows join them for Fight For Your Right To Party. They also had a stage diving contest in the middle of their set. As per usual I crowd surfed with my camera because I am an asshole. Whatever the case it was amazing.

Also we tattooed some cute girls who are famous on the internet and comedian TJ Miller came by and was hanging out. All in all a good time. Today should be fun too… hope to see some of you there!