So it appears that my site is working again… at least a little bit. Evidently some huge website was hot linking a bunch of zombie photos of mine and just ruining my bandwidth. I just deleted all the photos. No more zombies for you bro. Anyway, we got two more Austin galleries to go and first up is the MtvU Woodie Awards.

The Woodie Awards are some sort of awards that MTVU gives out during SXSW every year. I am sure a quick google search would explain their exact premise but I am not the sort of journalist that cares about anything. Instead I will just tell you the story of how I ended up at the Woodie Awards.

When I was in Austin I ran into a flyer for the Woodie Awards. The headlining acts were Steve Aoki, Santigold and Childish Gambino. I’ve known Aoki for ages and I have been trying to shoot Santigold for a minute since we have a bunch of mutual friends. Childish aka Donald Glover I met when the Village Voice was doing a cover story on him at last years SXSW and he and I have hung out a few times since then. So when I saw the flyer I was like, this is a thing I should be at. It just so happened I had a break in my Sailor Jerry schedule during the awards so I applied for a press pass. Unfortunately Childish Gambino broke his leg and couldn’t make it, but they had Mac Miller fill in for him.

When I got to the awards I went to look for the press area but all there was was a riser that was about 100 yards away from the stage so that we could shoot the bands. I tried to go back stage with my press pass to no avail. I ran into the Wire Image guy trying to get back there too so I grabbed a press guy and talked him into letting us backstage to get some shots. They weren’t doing an official red carpet but they had a mini one set up for MTV to film on. They told the Wire guy and I that we could shoot on it. Since there were only two still photographers I asked them if instead I could pull them off the carpet so they let me do some quick portraits of people like Skrillex, Dillion Francis, Zedd and A-Trak.

I had seen Aoki backstage before I talked my way in but he was no where to be found. The Wire guy asked one of the PR people if he could get shots of Steve and she walked him over to the trailer. I went with them and the Wire guy got all in my face about it so when he came out of Steve’s trailer I got the PR person’s attention and introduced myself. Turns out we have had many exchanges over email and she let me in. I said hey to Steve and took a few shots of him and Lil Jon and the other DJ’s in there with him and then I mentioned to Lil Jon that I had photographed him at the Gathering of the Juggalos. As soon as I said that everyone in the room just looked at us like “Why the fuck were you at the Gathering of the Juggalos?”  So in what was pretty much the highlight of my SXSW trip I got to talk to Lil Jon about juggalos for like 20 minutes. Lil Jon also was hilarious congratulating Skrillex on his Grammy Awards “Welcome to the club. I only got one of ’em.”

At some point I tried to shoot Santigold but we were so far away from the stage I didn’t see the point so I just took about 10 photos and then headed back stage. I got a few more red carpet type shots of Machine Gun Kelly and Mac Miller with their awards and then I peaced the fuck out. The whole thing was a pretty fun diversion from all the branding work I did all week… now if only I could find out what the hell a Woodie Awards is…

Click here to see all my photos from backstage at the 2012 MTV Woodie Awards.

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