Many years ago I had a chance meeting with Reby Hardy (I think she was still Reby Sky back then) at a wrestling event at the Gathering of the Juggalos. It was the one year I was actually working for the festival and I was photographing backstage at their Bloodymania event. I was a wrestling fan as a kid so it was a really fun experience to photograph some pro wrestlers I knew growing up, it was just really dark in there so the photos weren’t much to speak of. (I would honestly love to do more wrestling documentary behind the scenes stuff.)  But the event was being run by this completely insane old school wrestler, like George “The Animal” Steele era and honestly it was a little bit of trauma bonding for everyone back there.

When I put up my post about the event several wrestlers shared it and I ended up following a few of them, one of those being Reby. For the next decade plus we maintained some sort of Twitter friendship. We only met for about 5 minutes but I felt like we were friends. We even exchanged Christmas cards and she helped me secure an exclusive interview with her brother in law for an article in the LA Weekly. (I guess at this point I should mention she is married to professional wrestler Matt Hardy, who with his brother Jeff were one of my favorite tag teams in high school.)

Anyway, last year when I got her Christmas card I noticed the return address was in North Carolina, and while I hadn’t moved there yet, I had been there to visit my girlfriend’s dad. Turns out they live about 20 minutes away from him which is only about two hours from where I live now. I figured one of these days maybe we would get to meet up if we were in her neighborhood. I finally decided that Halloween would be that excuse. I just got a car for the first time since mine was totaled in 2015 so I wanted to do a road trip and get you guys some spooky content.

Next thing I should mention in this post is that while her husband is a famous wrestler, she’s a bit of a celebrity in her own right. She wrestles too, but she was also a Playboy model, a dancer, she’s one hell of an artist, and she has millions of followers on TikTok. And the reason she has all those followers? Her absolutely insane interior decorating skills, and her youngest child, Goth Baby.

Goth Baby is Reby and Matt’s 4th child and the only girl and when she was born Reby got her a super goth crib and bedroom, and started dressing her like an adorable tiny vampire. Their whole place is so spooky and cool that I honestly couldn’t tell how much of it was decorated for halloween. Goth Baby (and the other kids) have a hidden school room that is full of bright colors but most of the downstairs is spooky as hell. I got to hang with Goth Baby and even took some photos of her dressed as a ghost jumping on a bouncy castle, that they just have casually inflated in their yard. 

The whole place was so amazing. I really should have taken more photos of just the house. Aside from all the spooky stuff, all the kids have their own custom rooms and they have a full arcade in the basement. There’s a large gym (of course) with all of Matt’s Championship belts and a ton of cool stuff from his career down there including about 100 action figures of him and his brother. I almost wish I was still a wrestling fan so I could have really geeked out, but just the collector/hoarder in me was obsessed with it all. I would love to see my collections on display like everything in their amazing house. Oh, and of course behind their house they just happen to have a huge barn with a wrestling ring inside it. 

I was only there for about two hours and we didn’t shoot a ton but the tour alone was worth the five hours in the car. It was also great to meet her kids. They are maniacs but they seemed so cool.  They wrestle too and I can’t wait to see what they are doing in 10 or 15 years. They already have a YouTube channel. Goth Baby seems super well adjusted and amazing despite what angry Christians on the internet would like you to believe. Oh, and that reminds me I need to plug Reby’s children’s book, Life of a Gothic Baby. 

Anyway, this post is way too long already so let me wrap it up. Thanks a ton to Reby for the hospitality and letting me take your photo. Happy Halloween everyone!

Click here to check out these Halloweeny photos of Reby Hardy (and at least two of her kids)!

Recently I started a new project over on my 35mm focused Instagram account, @nateigorsmith. My goal is to photograph 200 strangers on film and I figured I would put this blog post up to make myself accountable.

It started last April when I was hanging out with a bunch of photographers and it inspired me to shoot some street photography. I am somewhat known for my street work, but 90% of that work is just from living an insane life in one of the biggest cities in the world. I never went out of my way to shoot street photography, it just came to me. So last April I went out and shot those photos I was super disappointed in myself. I love street photography and I know what good work looks like, and my work was not good enough. I vowed to do a better job.

Unfortunately, I gave up on that vow very quickly. I didn’t do any proper street work after that, I just carried on with my life as normal until March when I left NYC and came to Wilmington, NC.  It’s a great city, near the beach, super affordable, but I am not inspired here. All my best recent photos have come while I am traveling and I needed to force myself to take photos. So I came up with a plan: I would photograph 200 strangers.

This project started a few months ago, and some of it is proper street work, some of it is street portraits and some of it just random people I meet in my life. I am sort of post dating this project to anything that I photographed after I got those April 2023 photos back, but only a small percentage of the total project will be old stuff because I am forcing myself to go out to shoot new work. I am forcing myself to approach strangers and try and get rid of some of the anxiety I have photographing strangers, which is a new development in my life. I am not sure if it was the pandemic, or just getting older, but I don’t have the courage it takes to be a street photographer, and I want to try and fix that. 

So to hold myself accountable, I am doing this blog post, and I have already posted several updates over on @nateigorsmith. You can see the first 20 strangers so far. I probably have about 60 done so far, so I got a lot of work to do going forward, but I am pretty excited for my trip to the NC State Fair this month. 

Click here to follow my 35mm Instagram account and follow the my new project. 

Ps. I recently scanned a bunch of newish NSFW instant film photos and uploaded them all to Girls of DBB. Just thought I would pass that info along in case you aren’t super interested in my street photography.

Everyone loves Sammy so I know you guys will be excited to see more of her. We have been taking photos together for nine years now, which is absolutely insane to think about. Sammy and I used to be neighbors and whenever I wanted to finish a roll of film, I would text her and see if she wanted to shoot. She’d just come down stairs and we would walk around the neighborhood and take some photos. It was a nice tradition. We have done a few proper shoots but the update that best expresses our work together is this collection of 35mm photos we shot in the streets: Sammy In The Neighborhood 

So recently when I was back in NYC I hit her up because I needed to finish a couple of rolls of film. She was down and I met her in the Lower East Side because it was on the way from Brooklyn to the East Village where I needed to drop off film. She came out in lingerie under her outfit and we went to work. We caused scenes in a crosswalk, took photos in bodegas and even chased some pigeons. We finished two rolls of color and ended up shooting nearly an entire roll of black and white.

But that’s where tragedy struck. I hadn’t loaded the film correctly and the whole roll of black and white was shot on a single frame of film. We were both heartbroken. Fortunately we got a lot of great stuff anyway. None of it has actual nudity, but it’s NSFW enough that I had to paywall it. Sorry about that, but there are some photos down below, and some more on my Instagram so check that out if you don’t want to sign up for Girls of DBB. But like, you should sign up for it, because there are a ton of older photos of her there and tens of thousands of other NSFW photos for one low price. 

Now click here to see the 35mm photos of Sammy on the streets of the Lower East Side. 

Okay kids, we did it. We have reached our final update of the 2024 Gathering of the Juggalos. Well, technically I did do a photoshoot with a certain juggalette that will eventually be posted, but I wanna get some other stuff up on here first before I return to that. Gotta spread out the content a little bit right? 

So let’s go through everything we posted already just for a recap and handy links for you guys

• Juggalo Portraits
• Miss Juggalette Contest (NSFW link here)
• Musical Artists
• Juggalos After Dark (Queen of the Cheeks NSFW link here)
• Faygo Wet T-Shirt Contest & More NSFW Juggalo Madness (NSFW link here)

I also shot photos for Brooklyn Vegan this year. This coverage is just highlights from everything I posted here, but there are a few slightly different edits and there’s some NSFW stuff that wasn’t paywalled so if you want a preview of what’s behind the curtain, the Brooklyn Vegan post is a good place to look.  

So what do I have left for you guys? Well it’s mostly just shit that didn’t fit into the other galleries. It’s only about 50 photos of the 800 I pulled from the 4000 I shot, but we got some fun stuff. We have crowd shots, random environment shots, people playing that carnival game where you try and climb a ladder and then fall off because it’s hard to keep your center of gravity in the same place while moving up a ladder. We have three whole shots from the Freakshow Deluxe sideshow thing. There are a few more in the misc NSFW gallery as well, but I didn’t shoot a ton of it because I got there late and I have photographed a lot of side show performances in my life. I can even do a few sideshow tricks myself, and by tricks I mean I can take your reading glasses and shove them into my brain which is just a bad time for everyone involved. 

Honestly half this gallery is the piñata event that takes place every year. It’s not officially part of the Gathering but this dude named Poncho walks around collecting stuff from juggalos for a piñata and then on the last day people break it open and everyone scurries like rats to get the prizes inside. I have seen some crazy stuff put in there from stickers to drugs to sex toys to cash, so it’s really fun to watch people swarm to get their treasures. This year the piñata was way too hard to break open so eventually everyone just gave up and ripped it apart by hand.

Okay, and that’s a wrap on 2024. I keep telling myself this is my last year, but next year is the 25th anniversary and I can’t miss that right? Oh no. One of these days I gotta get my juggalo book finished and maybe I can finally retire then, but I am sure I will see you all next time. Whoop Whoop.

Click here to see the rest of the photos from the 2024 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH.

Okay this is going to be a weird post for a number of reasons. Honestly I am not sure this should be a standalone post, but I guess it’s the weekend so way less people will see it anyway. This issue is that I have a bunch of NSFW crowd shots that I threw up on Girls of Driven By Boredom the other day, mixed with a couple NSFW photos from Freakshow Deluxe and some shots from the Chapter 17 party and just some other assorted madness like a topless woman in a wheelchair crowd surfing. Now I would like to share all of this stuff with you, but I can’t so I put it on my pay site. 

The other thing I have for you is the Faygo Wet T-Shirt contest (shout out Clownvis) which is always wild and honestly that’s what this post is mostly about, but there aren’t any photos in it safe enough for public consumption. The whole shoot is on Girls of DBB like everything else. There’s also a video I put together from that that’s on the site as well. It’s $5 or free to subscribers, but again it’s all too NSFW to post any previews of. I am going to find a few photos I am comfortable posting below because I don’t know what else to do, but I don’t know, just sign up for my paysite. It’s very cheap and there are tens of thousands of nude photos on there so you will get your money’s worth I promise and you will be supporting my work which is the thing you care about the most obviously, not the half naked juggalettes covered in cheap soda, or pop like these midwest juggalos like the call it.

Okay, click here to go to Girls of Driven By Boredom for all the NSFW content and I will be back tomorrow with some stuff you can actually look at for free. 

Welcome to another day of my 2024 Gathering of the Juggalos coverage. Today we got some nightlife photos or something. Basically everyday I would go down to the Gathering around 5pm and shoot until it got dark. Once it was too dark to shoot without a flash I would walk back to my rental car, drop off whatever 35mm camera I had with me and pick up my flash and head back down.

The problem is I hate shooting with flash these days. It’s weird, I used to shoot everything with flash, even portraits, but I am so over it. I just hate the way flash looks these days and it’s so pitch black at the Gathering that the focus assist light is super fucking annoying for everyone. You add to that the fact that I am old and tired and didn’t want to stay up until 4am every night I didn’t shoot a ton of late night photos, that being said I did shoot SOME stuff at night. 

The first night was the only night I stayed up late because on night two I was so fucking tired, night three the battery door on my flash broke (luckily I had an extra door) and on night four I left early. But night one was pretty good. I shot two events in this red circus tent and I fucking HATE the light in there. In the day it’s worse but even at night with a flash it’s so red because the flash bounces off the red roof. I said fuck it and just made every one of those photos black and white. 

The first night one event was the Queen of Cheeks which was an ass contest, seriously. Last year was the first year they had it and the photos I took were so fucking insane I had to come back. This year’s was slightly more sedate, but still VERY NSFW. There was a ring toss and a butt cheek Faygo carrying contest and god knows what else. Of course I had to paywall most of this stuff. I included some safe for work images, but 90% of it was too NSFW for this site. You can see everything, plus all my other NSFW content, on Girls of Driven By Boredom. I also uploaded a pretty tame video to the same site. I made it just $3 which is the lowest I am allowed to charge, and made it free to subscribers. 

After the Queen of Cheeks ended the Chapter 17 Records party took place. My buddy Kev Buc was DJing for some of it, and Ouija Macc was there and some other musicians and stuff. It was pretty fun. Lots of cute juggalettes were hanging out including the adult film start Kazumi who put a butt plug in live on stage which resulted in some pretty great photos I wish I could show you but of course I can’t because once again we live in a society created by and governed by religious extremists. They are of course available on Girls of Driven By Boredom.

The other night I stayed out at all past midnight was the second night because my old pal Zac Amico was doing stand up. I was glad to see him but I was kinda afraid his stand up was gonna be some edgelord bullshit trying to be offensive because I know he does a lot of roast battles and he seems to hang with a bunch of comedians who complain about people being woke all the time. I was pleasantly surprised to see that while his set had some edge to it, it was mostly just storytelling and he told a few interesting and genuinely funny stories before I had to bounce so I could actually get some sleep after getting six hours total in the last 48. Someone opened for him and I forget his name and I feel like a dick for that but I know he was from Chicago and friends with my Gathering of the Juggalos pal wrestler Colt Cabana, cause I ran into Colt there.

Okay, so yeah, I didn’t go out on night two, but there are plenty of crowd shots in here too. Some of my favorites were taken at the end of ICP’s Thursday night set where I photographed everyone who was coming off stage. ICP does this “Faygo Armageddon” thing where they bring up about 100 people on stage to throw Faygo everywhere. I have actually done it twice myself and it is so god damn fun. Truly joyful. But yeah, soaked people are fun to photograph so got a lot of that stuff. 

Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything else worth mentioning, just go check out the gallery and I will be back tomorrow with even more NSFW stuff and we will wrap everything up on Monday. See you soon.

Click here to see all the after dark photos from the 2024 Gathering of the Juggalos.

And click here for the NSFW stuff!

Here comes Gathering of the Juggalos post 3 of 6. I told you 7 the other day because there is a 7th post, but I will be posting in a couple weeks or something because it’s not exactly part of this coverage and I wanna get a couple other posts up before I drop it. Anyway we got Gathering Bands today and then one post a day until Monday and then we can all move on with our lives. Deal?

Okay so this could take me forever but I am technically on vacation so I am just gonna do this as fast as possible so it’s gonna be mostly a list of artists I photographed in order with a couple of notes. Also, I only shot the mainstage this year. I am too old to spend 12 hours at a music festival unless I am getting paid way more than I was to shoot the Gathering. Sorry. 

I got there a bit late on Wednesday so the first artist I photographed was Young Mo$h followed by Shaggy the Airhead who I will shout out cause 1) I dig his clothing line and 2) much more important, he came up to me to tell me how much he likes my photography so he and his clothing gets a shout out. He was followed by the Hatchet Man Project, Scum and Insane Poetry, and horrorcore legend Esham headlined.  

Thursday I missed Darby O’Trill accidentally. I did wanna shoot him cause he’s dating my friend but I fucked up. I did manage to catch Mastamind, the Dayton Family and Merkules. ICP headlined with a throwback set to their House of Horrors show in 1998 which is a tour I actually saw them on because my first ever girlfriend really dug them. Shout out Latiffa.

Friday my old friend Zac Amico was hosting the stage so I got some shots of him doing his thing there including getting stapled in the head. Apparently I missed SalamanderX, but I caught Twisted Insane and Ganksta N-I-P. I was most excited about seeing Rakim which was fucking awesome. It was mixed reaction from juggalos. Too many had no idea who he was, but then others were even more excited than I was. I talked to one older juggalo who should know better who had no idea who he was and he told me he didn’t listen to rap which kinda blew my mind. Anyway, Rakim was by far the musical highlight. Kim Dracula was a favorite of the crowd, someone told me they were a less problematic Marilyn Manson which is a great way to describe anyone. My dude Ouija Macc headlined who I am always psyched to see. 

The last night was a shit show for me. My phone got wet and the charging cable stopped working and I drove to a Walmart to get a wifi charger and I missed the first few artists. My goal was to get back in time for DJ Paul but I just missed the beginning of his set so I wasn’t allowed to take photos up close. I pushed my way into the pit and got a couple from the crowd but then it started pouring rain. I went and hid in a carnival booth and just jammed out to Three Six Mafia hits while keeping my camera gear dry. I also helped a carney put away all his stuffed animals which he really appreciated and told me I could stay dry in there all night. My poncho was in the car but a juggalette gave me one which was awesome of her and I stuck around for Static X. Their front man died since the last time they played the Gathering and it was very weird that they just replaced him with like a cyborg version, but at least it was fun to photograph. ICP closed out the night but it was raining hard and I was exhausted and in pain because I am old and my phone was fucked and I didn’t want to get covered in Faygo because I had to go on vacation and I didn’t want my beach clothes to smell like mildew so I said fuck it and went back to my hotel. If you need any photos of ICP, feel free to look at the other two dozen times I have photographed them.

Okay, that’s it. See you tomorrow with a bunch of night time photos and events.

Click here to see all the music from the 2023 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH.

As I mentioned in my last post, we got plenty of NSFW for you this year. I just get a surprisingly large amount of emails from people who want juggalette content and I want to deliver despite how much of a creep I feel sometimes shooting this stuff. I like to think of myself as some sort of journalist, and here we are photographing juggalettes shooting fireworks out of their… look, I am trying my best here.

I shot three NSFW events but the one I shot by far the most photos of was the Miss Juggalette pageant. I think I took over 400 of them plus some video and it was a pretty wild event. My old friend Zac Amico was one of the judges (along with Big Jay Oakerson, Angela Mazzanti and a 4th judge I feel terrible that I don’t know the name of) and I told him that Miss Juggalette can be really boring or completely insane and I was right. It was both.

The event started out pretty slowly with a ton of contestants and everyone just answering Clownvis’ random questions about themselves, but once the talent part of the contest started it got deeply weird. Some of the talents involved singing which didn’t go over well (except the opera singer!) and the three people who did balloon animals were not everyone’s cup of tea, but then there was a girl who did a dance routine that was “interrupted” by her getting a bucket of blood thrown on her (which caused every contestant to slip and slide around the stage and attracted dozens of bees). After that things got weirder and weirder, you had a graphic strip routine by Tat2Barbie, a woman who sat on a 2 liter of Faygo, a juggalette who was just slapping people and of course our fireworks shooting friend. 

The swimsuit contest was just an excuse for nearly everyone to get naked and it just devolved from there. The contest ended with everyone just dancing on stage in various states of undress. The crowd was pretty pumped. 

In the end Tat2Barbie won and cried and I got such a great shot of her, but I can’t post it on here cause we live in a puritanical nightmare, but you can check it out on my paywalled site of course. 

Speaking of the paywall situation, this gallery has 50 safe for work images. The actual gallery has nearly 200!! So that means there are 150 photos I shot that are too NSFW to post on here. I also posted a video of the event that is free if you are a member (or $5 if you aren’t). It’s only a minute long because I was shooting photos, but it’s pretty crazy. 

By the way, if you were in the contest, and want your photos, reach out to me on Instagram or Twitter and I will send you your photos. I would say email, but I don’t trust you motherfuckers, I need proof it’s you.

Okay, now click here to see the SFW 2024 Miss Juggalette pageant photos.

Or click here to see the NSFW ones.