I got back from the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos a few days ago but I have taken my sweet time to post these because most of them are already online via the LA Weekly (and all the other Voice Media papers). I will post all those links in part four of this madness. In past years I have broken these photos down by subject but this is my 8th god damn one of these and I just wanna get these photos up and move on with my life. The plan is two posts today and two posts tomorrow and then on to whatever comes next.

Let’s start by talking about what every juggalo in the festival was talking about: Oklahoma sucks. The Gathering was supposed to be in Colorado but several venues fell through because the FBI designates juggalos as a gang because apparently the FBI has never actually met a juggalo. At the last minute they found this place called Lost Lakes Amphitheater in Oklahoma City and it turned out to be kinda a disaster for a bunch of reasons. First of all beer in Oklahoma is watered down which is like some shit I thought they only pulled in Utah. All hard liquor was theoretically outlawed and the place was full of undercover cops were arresting people for selling drugs and supposedly public nudity. I saw supposedly because I only heard rumors but all the nudity got shut down. Not sure how you can even call it a festival with everyone sober and clothed. The place also had weird cut off times for music, it was hot as balls, it was far from the midwest where most juggalos live, it was spread out over miles and the line up sucked. There were probably a third of the juggalos there as normal It was a total bummer.

Aside from all that it was not completely terrible. The combination of the brutal heat and the line up sucking meant I showed up late every day and still managed to take a million fucking photos. I didn’t have to worry about shooting the bands so I could focus on just shooting juggalos cause I knew I couldn’t sell any of the band photos. Oh and my hotel had a pool plus Gia Paige came with me for three of the four days. So really it was chill as fuck.

Day one I only had one gallery due and I flew in to Oklahoma City that day so I didn’t get down to the Gathering until about 7pm. I had an hour of light to get a few shots and then popped on the flash. Mushroomhead headlined and they are real weird looking so I took photos of them and then hung out with Mike Busey and his “Busey Beauties” who have been the highlight of the last few Gatherings. They had to keep stuff PG and they shut down their stage at 11pm cause of the stupid noise rules so I just hung out with them on their bus mostly. It was air conditioned, full of strippers and there was a pug. 0 complaints.

Anyway, that’s all I got for the first update. Day two is coming in a few hours. It’s a much bigger gallery.

Click here to see the mildly NSFW photos from day one of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos in Oklahoma City.

My friend January Seraph died a few days ago. I am not sure that there has been an official cause of death announced but based on what I have heard and what I know about January it sounds like it was suicide. January was a wonderful fucking human who dealt with severe depression and other mental problems. It’s something we have in common and is really how we first formed a bond.

January and I had been friends online for a long time but in 2014 I had Tweeted about depression and out of nowhere I got an email from her reaching out to tell me she was there for me. She told me about her depression and that I was too talented to be sad for too long. It was the sweetest email from someone who was nearly a stranger. It meant a lot to me.

A few months later I was in LA and was having a particularly bad day. I had some shoots canceled and I was in a terrible mood and once again I sent out a Tweet. This time it was about needing a model since people had flaked. January reached out. She lived in San Francisco but she was in LA. Less than an hour later she was in my hotel room and we were shooting.

January and I became instant friends after that. It seems crazy to me that I only knew her in real life for a few years. We bonded over depression, mutual friends and crazy stories of lives well lived. January was an internationally renowned dominatrix and when she would be in NYC working I would always hang out with her after she got off work and last summer when I did a west coast road trip I stayed with her in San Francisco twice once on the way up and once on the way down.

January was so generous and amazing. She offered to fly me to San Francisco once to visit because she was about to try some new experimental treatment for her depression and she wanted to hang out with me before it started. She told me that she had no problem spending money on her friends because she made enough money when she was working and wanted to spend it because she never knew how much time she would have left.

And that’s just the thing. Severe depression is like any other illness. If you can’t treat it, it’s terminal. It’s not a matter of if it’s going to kill you, it’s a matter of when. I have had so many friends take their own life and I have learned that there’s not much you can do. You can postpone it and try and get them help, but sometimes it’s just inevitable and that’s the saddest fucking thing. January tried every possible treatment she could find including some pretty extreme stuff, but it was just never enough and I don’t think there’s anything anyone could have done.

I think the main thing we can all do is talk about mental illness more. We need to treat it like any other illness or disability. If we can remove the shame from it maybe then people will feel more comfortable reaching out and asking for help.

So let me share a little bit of my story and maybe start a conversation that you guys can continue. I have had terrible depression my entire life. I have never been suicidal but I have never been happy for more than brief moments. It’s just this constant weight on me and when it gets bad I don’t get out of bed or leave the house. I can’t be productive, I gain weight and I piss off my friends. On top of that I grew up with dysgraphia, ADHD and a severe form of obsessive compulsive disorder now known as Tourettic COD.  Because of this I was a weird fucking kid who struggled in school and got picked on constantly until I was 16 or 17. That shit does not help with depression I promise.

As an adult I still have issues with depression and ADD but computers help a lot with the dysgraphia and with a lot of behavioral therapy I am very incontrol of my OCD. I still feel it every day, especially right now as I think about it but it’s very manageable. I feel very lucky not to have suicidal thoughts or many of the personality disorders, anxiety or mania that a lot of my friends have but it’s not been an easy life despite the massive amount of privilege I’ve had as an upper middle class straight white male.

So there you go, now you know a little bit about my mental illness and now maybe you can relate and maybe you can tell someone else about your problems. Bring this shit out of the closet and if you are feeling bad tell someone. There’s always someone who will be there for you even if you don’t think there is.

I don’t even know what else to say but I fucking miss you January and I don’t wanna see any more of my friends take their own life. I can’t fucking deal with it anymore.

Anyway, I wanna share with you the first and only photo shoot January and I ever did. When she died I was looking for a photo to post and I realized I had never put these photos up. I felt like I had to get them up right away in her honor. I know she really liked the photos she saw.

Now here’s the point where I would normally tell you that are some extra photos on my app but I obviously am not going to plug my bullshit in a post like this so instead of signing up for my app, take a moment to donate some money to American Foundation For Suicide Prevention or another mental health charity. Or if nothing else, just hug someone you care about. You never know when it’s gonna be the last time.

Click here to see the first and last photo shoot I ever did with my amazing friend January Seraph. Rest in peace. 

I have made it back to NYC and I have just a few days before I leave again for the god damn Gathering of the Juggalos. I got a ton of books to ship (buy my book!) and a lot to do in the next 5 days so I am gonna try to make this quick.

One week ago today I was in LA I hit the AVN House Party deep in the valley. AVN if you aren’t aware is the number one magazine covering the adult industry but they also do a ton of shit including throwing the AVN Awards that I have been covering for a decade. They also wrote a great review of my book!

My LA book release party was the next day and a room full of porn stars seemed like the perfect excuse to promote the book party so I hit up my friends at LA Weekly so I could make a little money while also trying to convince cute girls to come to my party. It worked out pretty well because I met Gia Paige who came to the party and hit on me and we took photos and hung out and I think now she might be coming to the Gathering of the Juggalos with me which is probably a terrible mistake but don’t tell her that because I am real psyched about it.

Anyway, there are a lot of pretty photos of pretty people in here and there is a bunch of nudity because porn stars like being naked. Oh, I should also mention that they announced Angela White and Harli Lotts are going to be the next hosts of the AVN Awards which was sort of the point of the party.

Click here to see all my NSFW photos from the 2017 AVN House Party.

Last night I threw the second and last Instaxxx release party. The NYC one was fun, the LA version was fucking insane. I am always stressed out when I throw parties and there was plenty of shit to get stressed out over but the party was actually really good and I would have had a ton of fun if I wasn’t the one throwing it.

Superchief Gallery LA is such a great space in DTLA and I am really glad I threw the party there. That being said they don’t really have a DJ set up and apparently I either borrowed the wrong stuff or not enough stuff so Carter Cruise had to DJ off iTunes. It was pretty hilarious but she kinda killed it anyway. When her set was over she was laughing about how she only had the music on her Itunes cloud and so she ran out of music “at some point I just played an A-Trak mix for 2o minutes.”  Sorry Carter!

By the time Kate Mo$$ played it was already after 10 and the party was supposed to end at 10. It did not. Kate Mo$$ played a short insane set that was pretty perfect for the party. I unfortunately missed half of it cause I was doing shit but I am really glad they came out. It was total madness.

Joseline Kelly played after that and then I took photo of her in a bathroom cause the bathrooms at Superchief are grimy and cool looking so clearly I had to shoot some photos in there.

Speaking of girls in bathrooms, huge thanks to Charlotte Sartre and Riley Nixon for hanging out topless on a couch all night. Not sure the photo booth worked exactly how we planned it but it made the party a lot more fun.

I think that’s it. Thanks to everyone who came out and partied with me and thanks to everyone who bought a book. If you are in LA and still want one get at me quick cause I have about 10 more books than I want to take home with me.

Buy a book here.

Oh, and also I should mention that these photos have an unreasonable amount of nudity in them. Enjoy.

Click here to see the NSFW photos from the Instaxxx LA release party at Superchief Gallery LA.

Last night my book Instaxxx finally was born into the world. It was pretty exciting because this is by far the biggest project I have done. My last two books were about a third of the size of Instaxxx and every part of this required way more time, money and effort than all of my other books or art shows and I still have a lot to do. I am starting to ship books out today but I have nearly 500 packages to send out. Plus there’s the release party in LA on July 14th. Should be an interesting couple of weeks…

Anyway, last night was a blast. The night started off slow but by 9pm Superchief NY was popping. It’s a massive space in Ridgewood, Queens but it actually filled up pretty nicely. I sold some books, took some photos and we ran out of beer 30 minutes before the party ended which is honestly pretty well timed. Huge thanks to Pabst Blue Ribbon for all the cases!

I of course have to thank the DJs OHAILEIGH, Cat Lady and Francesca Darling for not only DJing the party but for posing for the book. I assume it’s gotta have been the first time any of you guys DJed with naked photos of yourselves projected on the wall in front of you right? Thanks a ton!

Also thanks a bunch to Mel and her friend (and my buddy Sucklord’s girlfriend) Meg for running an insane photobooth. The idea was for Mel to take photos of people topless with Meg but they both ended up topless all night and no one seemed to mind. I feel like it was a solid idea and hopefully the LA version will work out even better. Naked friends in LA let me know if anyone wants to volunteer…

It’s at this point I should mention that I get so fucking stressed out at events like this that I do a completely terrible job of taking photos. I meant to like Instagram live and like Tweet out photos and things and I did none of that. I also took some of the worst party photos I have ever taken. If I had hired someone to shoot a party for me and they came back with these I would fire myself. Still, at least you get some sort of idea of what the party was like and you can see people drinking that cold refreshing PBR…. Gotta get those sponsor shots!

Lastly, thanks to everyone who came out and helped out with this book and this party especially everyone at Superchief. I just hope that the party at Superchief LA goes as well as last night!

Now go check out these photos and given that more than a dozen people who were in the book showed up this gallery is fairly NSFW even if the photos are not very good.

Click here to see all the photos from the NYC Instaxxx book release party at Superchief NY!

Ps. Get your copy of Instaxxx here! Oh and you can get my new zine NOT SAFE here.

I have talked a ton about my new book Instaxxx that will be out at the end of the month, but what I haven’t really talked about is the companion zine “NOT SAFE“. When I raised over $20,000 on Kickstarter I wanted to do something to give back to the people who backed by book and also to the women who have shot with me over the years.

I decided to do a zine that served several purposes. The first goal was to create a bonus for my Kickstarter backers. Everyone who bought Instaxxx via Kickstarter had the ability to buy NOT SAFE for $5 including US shipping. The second goal was just to create a zine with some of my favorite photos from some of my favorite models. I wasn’t trying to create a portfolio or anything but I thought it would be good to have something I could hand to a model or a client and say “hey this is what I like to do”.

But this zine had a greater purpose and that was to thank the women who have shot with me over the years and give a message to my fans who enjoy looking at my work but don’t really have any respect for the women who I photograph.

The title NOT SAFE refers to both the puritanical idea that nudity is somehow offensive and is “Not Safe For Work” and the sexist culture that has created a world where women can’t go online or walk down the street without being harassed. The cover features my friend Kate wearing some adorable double entendre kitty underwear that in this case is meant to invoke Trump’s horrifying “Grab her by the Pussy” line.

I see my “fans” posting awful comments on the blog and on my Instagrams and via Twitter. You can say any negative comment about me and I will leave it up but I delete and/or defend every negative comment about the model. They are putting themselves out there, often just because they want to work with me and it drives me crazy to see people attack them.

Women get harassed just for existing and when a woman puts herself out there and poses nude that stuff is taken to another level. I started out taking naked photos just because I liked looking at naked women. I didn’t even consider what the women would go through. The last decade of doing it professionally has made me think about that shit constantly. Seeing what women have to deal with just for taking a sexy photo is so fucking upsetting.

So this zine is a thank you to those women who put up with that shit every day, it’s about how nudity shouldn’t be considered offensive and it is a message to you guys to think about how you treat women both online and in real life. Plus it has a bunch of pretty photos of pretty women in it.

You can pre-order NOT SAFE as part of the Instaxxx pre-order here.

One dollar from every zine sold will be donated to Safe Horizon a charity that helps victims of violence including rape, sexual assault and domestic abuse.

Both Instaxxx and NOT SAFE start shipping June 30th.

When I was in Austin for SXSW back in March I was bored waiting for a band to play. I started refreshing my Twitter over and over again and I noticed a notification from someone named Giselle Palmer. I lurked her page and almost instantly knew I needed to take her photo. I DMed her and said “if we are ever in the same place I would love to take your photo” and she messaged me back that she lived in Austin. A few hours later I was in her apartment taking photos.

I was in the middle of working on my Instaxxx book (goes to print today!!) and I knew I could get some good shots of her in her apartment using the flash of the Instax camera. I was right. She has her own spread in my book and another photo in my next zine. Unfortunately it was nighttime and  her apartment sucked for taking digital photos. We decided to plan a second shoot during daylight hours but I only had two more days in Austin so I figured I should shoot some digital stuff just incase and I am glad I did.

Turns out that Giselle is hot enough that shitty lighting and mediocre photography doesn’t really matter! I have a gallery of more than 70 photos for you and not one of them is correctly white balanced but every one of them is real hot. I feel like I spend a lot of time telling you why I took terrible photos, but to be honest no one really cares but me. You guys are just gonna look at these photos and think “holy shit Giselle is hot” and not even notice that most of them are underexposed. I get it. Let’s move on.

So a few weeks after I left Austin, Giselle took a trip to LA to shoot some porn. She started webcamming in December of this year so in January she went to Vegas to check out the AVN Awards. While she was walking around Naughty America noticed her and flew her back out to Vegas to shoot her first porn scenes. When I met Giselle that is all she had ever shot. I don’t even think the scenes were out yet and no one had ever heard of her, but when she went to LA she never left.

Within days of visiting LA she got the biggest agent in porn and seems to be shooting nearly every day. She blew up instantly like I knew she would. She is so hot, so rad and a total creep and I mean that in the best way. Real glad I got to shoot her before she gets way too big to shoot with me.

Anyway, I thought this would be a good introduction to Giselle but just wait until you guys see the rest of the stuff we shot. On my last day in Austin we went out with Holly Beth and spent all day in a park shooting some really pretty stuff. I think you guys are gonna really love it.

Finally, I should mention there are some extra explicit shots on Girls of Driven By Boredom that you should go look at if you are into that kinda thing. All the images on there are in high resolution too… but if you don’t have Girls of DBB just go look at the rest of the photos!

Click here to see all the NSFW photos of Giselle Palmer!

When the AVN Awards aired I happened to be at my parent’s house in DC and I actually got to watch it. Back in NYC I do not have cable much less fancy things like premium channels. What I do have is the internets and I managed to get a clip of my segment from the awards if you wanna check that out.

The video is really about Jillian Janson who was nominated for Female Performer of the Year but I got to do a shoot with her for the video. They interviewed me and Jillian about our first shoot which I should probably publish sooner rather than later. It was under the Santa Monica Pier and was a ton of fun. Jillian is great as I have probably mentioned before.

This video also features some truly terrible acting from myself and features a misspelling of the word Boredom in Driven By Boredom which happens all the time. I really wish I owned drivenbybordom.com but some asshole bought it and put spam there so please learn how to spell boredom everyone.

Sadly the video does NOT feature the part where we snuck into the kitchen at the Hard Rock for a shoot and got kicked out by security. It would have been amazing but they didn’t have release forms and things so they couldn’t use the video. Tragic.

Anyway, watch this video and don’t forget to look at the photos Jillian and I shot for it if you haven’t already. Also thanks to Scott and Jeff and the crew who filmed this thing for including me!

At the end of last year I was trying to get my Instaxxx Kickstarter finished and I needed some shots still for the Kickstarter video. I reached out to a girl named Medusa Machina who I had met years ago but I think I had only seen once since then. We had talked about shooting in the past and this would have been a perfect time to shoot her and get the shots I needed for the video.

Fortunately she was house sitting for her friend Dennis who has an amazing apartment and she had this fantasy about cutting all her clothes off. I told her I was down to shoot whatever she wanted if she was in my Kickstarter video. She was totally down and we got to work in the kitchen slowly cutting her clothes off.

The kitchen leads to the pantry which for some reason leads to a bathroom so as she was finishing cutting her clothes off we figured why not shoot her in the shower. It was probably a mistake because the lighting was horrific in there, but to be honest the shots of her showering were pretty fucking sexy. I mean you can’t go wrong with that even if the lighting is ugly as hell. Plus the flash on the polaroids looked great in there which you can see if you go pre-order my damn book.

After we shot we recorded the video and shot a bunch of polaroids for the book. One of them ended up being the main image for the Kickstarter campaign. She was reading a book and you couldn’t see any actual nudity so it was the perfect image for promoting the book in a slightly safe for work way. Plus it ended up being the postcard reward for the Kickstarter too. So everything worked out really well.

I should also probably mention that aside from the terrible lighting in the bathroom there are also waaaay to many photos in this set. There are about 100 of them when there’s probably only 20 that I would normally post, but I thought it was good to tell the whole story of her cutting off her clothes. It’s probably a bad thing if you like good photography but a great thing if you wanna see a ton of photos of Medusa so just a heads up. I should also mention you can see these same images in high resolution with “hands free browsing” over on Girls of Driven By Boredom.

Lastly, thanks a ton to Dennis for letting us use your place! Now go look at some damn photos!

Click here to see nearly 100 photos of Medusa Machina cutting all her clothes off!http://archive.drivenbyboredom.com/gallery/medusa-machina/