I have now photographed 9 consecutive Gathering of the Juggalos. If you don’t know what the Gathering is, how did you even get to my website? I keep telling myself I am going to retire after 10, but I said that after 5 too. Hopefully this will be the year I finally do my juggalo photo book but then again I have been saying that for years too. Whatever the case I took 3000 photos of jugalos which I have edited down into seven galleries that will be distributed to you throughout the week along with some articles/galleries I did for other clients. 

This first post is sort of a “best of” gallery in that it’s my favorite portraits from the festival. Obviously there’s some crazy fun stuff in here that isn’t in this gallery, but it’s a good place to start. A bunch of these are in the Noisey article that came out today but there is stuff in here not in there and vice versa. There’s also a few photos in here that are also in other galleries but it serves as a good teaser of what’s to come.

I should also mention that I had a VERY NSFW tweet go viral from the Gathering, and if you want to see the high resolution photo from that Tweet I put it and a bunch of other NSFW juggalo photos on Girls of Driven By Boredom.

Lastly a couple things I should mention about the actual logistics of my trip and the festival. The festival returned to Thornville, OH where it had been for three years previous to last years last minute Gathering in Oklahoma. I drove there with fellow juggalo journalist Camille Dodero and my friend Contessa Suto who performs music as Cunt Mafia (more on her later). We rented a car and drove there to save money. Camille couldn’t leave Tuesday so we got to the fest late on Wednesday and had to return the car early Sunday morning so we missed most Saturday. We did spend a couple hours there on the last day and I was actually pretty productive so I don’t feel like we missed out on too much.

Okay so now let’s go look at some juggalo photos already.

Click here to see my favorite portraits from the 2018 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH.

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.

Hey look at this! It’s the last lost gallery from 2015! This is a shoot I did with Ava Dalush in LA shortly after the first time we took photos in Las Vegas. Make sure to check the other lost sets of Jenna J. Ross and Kaya & Vonka.

In between the first two shoots we did she retired from the adult industry but still wanted to take photos. I was glad to do it because not only is she great to photograph but she’s just good people. She’s hilarious and British which is a pretty standard combination and we actually went to Olive Garden for some insane reason. It was truly terrible but at least I got to take a bunch of pretty photos of her on some sort of giant hill we found in the Valley somewhere. 

I actually don’t even remember where we were because these photos are so old and it really bums me out to realize I haven’t talked to Ava in the years since. I honestly don’t know how I lost these photos because when I found them I saw that I had already edited them. I had pulled extra high res photos for Girls of Driven By Boredom too and they were already on there but somehow I forgot to post them to this site. It makes zero sense.  I clearly have no idea what I am doing. 

At least 2015 is finally done and now it’s on to 2016! I am going to try and post the “best” of 2016 tomorrow and then I head off to photograph my juggalos again somewhere in Ohio. When I get back from there I can start finish posting the lost sets from 2016 (there’s only two!) and then we can finally only be a year behind on naked girl photos! Huzzah. 

Click here to see all the photos from the second time I shot Ava Dalush way back in 2015.

My friends at BBQ Films are back with another amazing interactive film screening. I met them years ago when I shot their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles screening for the Village Voice. I had such an amazing time that I actually started showing up at their brainstorming sessions and helped them work on a number of screenings over the years. The entire time I’ve known them I have been trying to get them to do Wayne’s World and they finally did it! (Although I haven’t been to any of their meetings in a long time so I don’t think I had anything to do with it.)

I have a BFA in “Photography and Filmmaking” and while I focused primarily on the photography part of that, I took a ton of film classes. Pretty much every elective I took was a film history class. I loved that shit. I was a huge film nerd and when I was still living in Virginia I was taking a couple of trips a month to NYC just to watch films. One of the main reasons I moved to NYC in the first place was to watch more movies (ironically when I moved to NYC I didn’t have the time or money to keep up my cinephile ways). Essentially, I have spent most of my life as a pretentious asshole when it comes to film. I mean just look how many times I called it “film” in this paragraph. What a dick!

The point of that totally needless paragraph was to explain that despite my art house cinema pretension, my favorite movie of all time is Wayne’s World. I have loved it since I saw it in the 5th grade and I have seen it probably 100 times since. It’s the movie I have seen the most (by far) and I can quote half the movie which happens to be really annoying when watching it with me at my apartment, but really fun when you are in a music venue surrounded by a couple hundred people who are quoting every line along with you.

BBQ Films threw their Wayne’s World party, AKA Garthapalooza, at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, AKA Gasworks, in Brooklyn. They picked a musical venue because they wanted to incorporate the musical aspects of the movie into an interactive experience. They had several female fronted bands play the show before the screening and part of the profits from the event went to Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls to help inspire a new generation of female musicians. Hit Like a Girl opened the show and were followed by Early Riser.

The interactive experience really kicked off after that with “Wayne and Garth” introducing “Crucial Taunt” aka Young Thieves who covered the Tia Carrere cover of Sweet’s Ballroom Bliz.  The Young Thieves front woman dressed like Carrere’s character Cassandra and it was amazing. They did some of their own songs as well before Wayne and Garth came back out to announce that sadly the headliner “The Shitty Beatles” had canceled. Fortunately they had a back up plan and Calico Cooper of Beasto Blanco was introduced. Calico happens to be Alice Cooper’s daughter and she performed Alice’s song from the movie Feed My Frankenstein. (Hey Stoopid by Alice Cooper was absolutely the album of the summer between 5th and 6th grade.) She didn’t have her band with her, but no matter, a mix of people from BBQ Films and Young Thieves backed her up and it was really amazing. 

After the Calico Cooper performance the movie began, but a few minutes into the movie the lights came up and the BBQ Films actors playing Wayne, Garth and their crew were sitting on the steps of the stage almost as if they were seated in a car. Young Thieves returned to the stage and the entire crowd sang along to the infamous Bohemian Rhapsody scene. The movie came back on when the Mirth Mobile stopped to pick up their drunk friend Phil (played by my buddy Mike) who if he was going to spew, had to spew into this. They all got back into their fictional car and the band picked up right in time with the movie and we finished the singalong. I actually woke up this morning with a sore neck from all the head banging I did during the climax of the Queen classic.  After that the movie played as usual with everyone in the crowd yelling along to all the classic lines. The whole BBQ Films team came on stage as the credits rolled and the night was pretty much over.

On top of all that amazingness BBQ pulled out all the stops as usual. They had a photo booth set up that looked like the Wayne’s World set and a hockey net set up with a couple of my friends playing throughout the show, occasionally yelling CAR and GAME ON as they played. They had a bunch of extra sticks so people could take shots on goal all night. There was a “roadie training” set up and VIP Passes made to look like the Alice Cooper backstage passes from the movie. They had “Glen” from Stan Mikita’s passing out donuts and you could buy Red Vines for a dollar. They even had Wane’s famous Wayne’s World hat for sale (I managed to escape wth one myself) and of course they had the whole BBQ Films crew dressed up as characters from the movie which was slightly confusing given that half the crowd came dressed up as character from the movie as well. It was all really fantastic.

I am probably forgetting some stuff but this is nearly 1000 words already and nobody has time for that. Just go look at the photos and get on the BBQ Films mailing list so you don’t miss their next interactive movie. I hear it’s going to be spooky…

Click here to see all the photos from the BBQ Films Garthapalooza screening of Wayne’s World!

I had this idea to put up a bunch of old sets this week, but then my girlfriend came to visit and I didn’t get anything done so this is the only one I am dropping. I am shooting this amazing Wayne’s World party tomorrow so that should be up this weekend and then I will get some more throwback sets up next week. Sorry.

Anyway, when I was organizing old photos from 2015 I found a handful of lost sets. I already posted a set of Vonka Romanov & Kaya Lin and I uploaded all of them to Girls of Driven By Boredom already. But, today I bring you this set of Jenna J. Ross.

I don’t really know how I lost this set but it seems to be the only shoot I did on that trip to LA which might explain how I lost it. I am honestly not even sure why I was in LA or why I only did one set, but it’s a pretty fun one. I was introduced to Jenna by my friend (and super weird porn director (the porn is weird, he’s honestly surprisingly normal for a guy who turns beloved cartoons into X-rated nightmares)) Lee Roy Meyers. He is based in Vegas and I was asking him about people to shoot in Vegas at some point. He said I should hit up Jenna, but we didn’t actually shoot in Vegas so I don’t even know how that happened. 

I also don’t even remember where exactly we shot these photos, but it was some sort of state park in or around LA. It is some sort of hiking trail around some sort of body of water and I remembered we were never very far from the road. We weren’t visible to passing cars or anything, but the trail wasn’t that long and honestly any second people could have come around a corner and caught us. We did a pretty good job of shooting most of the set with at least some of her clothes on so we could have covered her up if people appeared, but we got brave and did some full nude stuff as well. We are champions or something. 

After the shoot we went to some sort of chain restaurant that I had never been to before but I don’t remember what it was or what we had. Honestly I don’t remember much, but I do remember that the roll of film I shot during the day got fucked up and  some of the funnier stuff we shot didn’t come out tragically. 

I hope you enjoyed a recap about a day I barely remember from three years ago. It was very well informed and interesting. Sorry I never posted these before, Jenna I hope you forgive me although I am sure I sent you and/or posted a handful of these right after because that’s usually what I do before forgetting a shoot for three years. Lastly, I should plug Girls of Driven By Boredom again because these photos have been on there for a week and the photos there are in higher resolution and there’s a few more explicit shots on there that are exclusive to the Girls of DBB. Go sign up already. 

Now click here to see a bunch of NSFW photos of Jenna J. Ross getting naked in public back in 2015.

Apparently it’s Thursday so I guess this can be a “Throwback Thursday” post. Whatever the case it’s another addition of my “Best of” posts. I have spent way too much time of my life organizing every photo I’ve ever taken and I done with another yet. 2015 is in the books. Fortunately I’ve also pretty much finished 2016 too. I am getting dangerously closed to being organized.

2015 was a terrible year for me and it featured the single worst day of my life where I got served with a lawsuit on the way into my good friend DJ Jess’ funeral. On the way home I got into a car accident. A few weeks later I broke up with my girlfriend and got into a second car accident. Months of depression followed and honestly my photography suffered from it as well. My back has been fucked up from the (first) car accident as well. When I was going through some of these galleries I just kept thinking about how much worse they were than stuff I shot previously. It’s really weird how my personal state of being could impact my work so drastically.

That being said there are still some highlights. I am currently figuring out how I am going to make it to another Gathering of the Juggalos, and when going through that stuff from 2015 I realized it might have been some of my best ever juggalo coverage. I shot a record cover for one of my favorite bands. I shot some great portraits at SXSW. I had some work in an art show in LA. I got my head shaved my a 90’s teen icon at an Empire Records party. I covered some quality nerd stuff like NY Comic Con and a Bronies watch party. I shot my friend Eaddy’s band Ho99o9 a bunch of times. I shot some fun stuff for Sailor Jerry as always and the Fool’s Gold Day Off is always fun. Oh, and I had a book release party for my second book Dinner With Igor.

On the naked lady side I shot some decent stuff over the year. I really liked the shoot I did of Ava Dalush at AVN and these photos I took of Chanel Preston. I met Carter Cruise in 2015 and we did two photo shoots in LA and then she came to NYC and bought us matching NSFW tattoos for my birthday. I also met my friend January Seraph in 2015. She reached out to me when she read about my depression and after we shot together we became really close friends. Unfortunately we lost her to depression last year.  I shot my friend Lucy Everleigh for the first time in 2016 (it was her first ever shoot!) . I don’t love the photos we shot but she’s a good friend of mine now so that rules. And lastly I should mention the shoot I did with my friend Erica. It wasn’t naked but she is one of my favorite humans and I’ve known her forever and I love the photos we made. Plus she just had a baby a few days ago which is adorable. 

I also found a few unpublished shoots from 2015. I found a second shoot I did with Ava Dalush that I already edited and posted on Girls of Driven By Boredom over two years ago, but apparently forgot to post on here. I also found a really fun shoot I did with Jenna J. Ross (that I just posted on Girls of DBB today) that I have no idea how I lost. And of course I found the Kaya & Vonka shoot I posted in my last update. I am gonna try and get the Ava & Jenna shoots up this week and try and get rid of the old photos sets ASAP. I found a few when going through 2016 as well so I might make a whole week of it. 

There are a lot more photos in here this gallery but I don’t wanna keep typing this. Lot’s of nudity and madness and famous people and I need to eat. It’s a massive gallery of nearly 300 photos and a ton of links to keep you busy. Just a couple more of these posts and I am gonna have to come up with a new excuse for not having a proper portfolio site. Come back soon. There will be more photos…

Click here to see some of my best photos from 2015.

The case of the missing photos keeps getting larger. Going through photos from 2015 and so far I have found three unpublished shoots. The first one was a shoot I did with Heather Vahn in an unreasonably dark hotel room. The 35mm stuff I shot was actually really great so I forgot about the incredibly mediocre digital photos we shot. Heather is still really pretty so I figured people might want to see these photos so I threw it up on Girls of Driven By Boredom as an app exclusive set. 

The second set I found was a shoot I did with Jenna J. Ross. I actually have no idea how this one got lost. It’s a fun shoot that we shot in some sort of park in LA. She gets fully naked in public so I feel like that’s one I would have wanted to get up, but yet I never did. I edited it already and I will be getting it up sooner rather than later.

The third shoot I lost was the one you are looking at now. I shot Kaya Lin (who was Lea Hart at the time) with her real life girlfriend (at the time) Vonka Romanov for a book submission. They unfortunately didn’t make it in the book but it was months before I found out they didn’t make it and I think between the time I shot these and the time I found out they didn’t make it I just totally forgot I had never published them. Whoops.

I shot these photos in the back of my friend Tod Seelie’s place before he went and moved to LA. Tod is one of my favorite event photographers and you should probably know who he is if you don’t already. I actually have a photo of his hanging on my bedroom wall between a Tim Barber and a Ed Templeton photo. Pretty good company. 

The other thing I should mention is that Kaya and I have been talking about shooting again soon and I actually found these photos between texts with her. I texted her about a date to shoot and then I started organizing my 2015 photos and I found these before she even had time to respond. Weird coincidence.

Okay, I’ve rambled enough. Time to look at some photos. Oh, and just to plug Girls of DBB again, this set has been up there for a few day already and there’s a handful of extra photos on there that are slightly more overtly sexual than these cause you know we like to keep it classy on the main page. Right.

Click here to see a bunch of NSFW photos of Kaya Lin & Vonka Romanov.

I met Meg Spectre for the first time when she offered to be part of the photo booth for the release party for my book Instaxxx. My friend Mel was shooting the photo booth and she though Meg would be a great model for it. I was happy to have her because I had seen Mel’s photos of her and she seemed super iconic looking. She looks like someone Warhol would shoot if he was still around.

After the release party, I talked to her about shooting a few times but it kept not happening. Finally we figured it out and I ended up shooting her at my friend Sucklord’s Chinatown art studio. Not only was Sucklord nice enough to let us use his space to shoot, but he’s also happens to be dating Meg and has been teaching her how to make her own toys. In fact Meg just released her first toys, The Spayed Squad, on Saturday. 

Also, the same day we shot these photos we did a shoot to test out my new lights that I bought for the press photos I did for Isle of Dogs. We did a quick shoot with the lights and they are available exclusively on Girls of Driven By Boredom. They’ve been up there for a while too so if you had a Girls of DBB account you’d have known all about Meg by now. 

Lastly, I felt like I should mention that one of the photos of Meg from the Instaxxx release party is in the International edition of Instaxxx and I still have a box of those left if anyone is interested in getting a copy.  

Okay, now go look at these photos of Meg and hopefully there will be even more photos of her soon because we have already talked about shooting again.

Click here to see all the NSFW photos of Meg Spectre shot at Sucklord’s studio! 

Last Thursday the Washington Capitals beat the Vegas Golden Knights to win the first Stanley Cup in team history. It was the first major Championship in my hometown of DC since 1992 and the first championship team that I have rooted for in my life. After celebrating all night at the NYC Caps Crew bar Jojo’s Philosophy in the West Village I started planning my trip to the Capitals parade in DC. 

My plan was going to go down with a few people on Monday afternoon, beating rush hour and getting to my parent’s place in Northern VA with plenty of time to sleep, but on Sunday night the Capitals announced that star players Alexander Ovechkin and Braden Holtby were going to be in NYC with the Stanley Cup for the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. I couldn’t believe it. Not only was the Stanley Cup going to be in NYC, but they are going to the show where my friend Seth Herzog works as the warm up comic. Heroically Seth got me backstage where I not only got to check off a major bucket list item and hold the Stanley Cup but I got to meet Holtby and Ovechkin. Ovechkin just happens to be my favorite human of all time. 

After Fallon was over I met up with my friend Sam who I have been watching hockey with since 1991 and my friend Justin who is part of the NYC Caps Crew and we drove south and got to my parents house around 2am. After a few hours of sleep we hit the parade. We got to the National Mall around 9am and it was packed with people already. We found a spot near the end of the parade route under a tree which was ideal given that we were going to have to stand there for four hours. When the parade finally started I made my way a bit closer to the street but still was behind a ton of people. I brought my camera just because I felt like I had to, but I didn’t even bring a long lens so my parade photos were pretty pointless. I got a few decent shots, but mostly garbage. I was just happy to be there.

I shot a few more photos of the crowd on the mall, but we were so far from the rally stage and just exhausted so we texted all of our friends and had them meet us in Arlington at the Arlington Rooftop Bar & Grill for an after party thrown by Russian Machine Never Breaks. RMNB is probably my favorite sports blog of all time and it was great to finally meet Ian who runs it. A bunch of the NYC Caps Crew made it out too, and I got to hang out with my friend Jamie who with Sam is one of my oldest, closest friends and is another person I’ve been watching Caps games with since childhood. I ran into a ton of people I know from hockey Twitter as well and it was just a really good time. 

I decided not to go out after that because I hadn’t slept at all and was pretty exhausted so I came home and edited these photos and crashed, but my Championship week isn’t quite over. Today I am going to get a Stanley Cup tattoo at Jinx Proof tattoos in DC which was the first place I ever got tattooed almost exactly 20 years ago.

It’s been one hell of a week after a lifetime of sports related suffering. I realize many of you can’t possibly imagine why I would care so much about sports but if you are interested in knowing a little bit more about how I felt, I wrote something for the NYC Caps Crew blog about it. Some of it might not make any sense if you aren’t a Caps fan, but I actually started crying while writing it, so it means a lot to me. And if you still don’t care about sports, don’t worry, I will go back to posting parties and nudity ASAP and won’t bug you with any more sports related content until September when football season starts…

Click here to see my photos from the Washington Capitals first ever Championship Parade & the RMNB after party.