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… 

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