In my last update I talked about how I had three girl gallery updates for you this week, but I also mentioned I had finished going through every photo I took in 2012. I also looked at my calendar and realized that Thursday is March 1st, which means that my website is turning 17 this week. In celebration I decided to do a post every day this week. We have the three girl galleries on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but we also will have an anniversary post on Thursday and I decided that today would be the perfect day to put up a gallery of my favorite photos from 2012.

I have done galleries like this before. Here are links to the best of 2009, the best of 2010 and the best of 2011. Hopefully the best of 2013 will be coming soon as well. So far I’ve made it to to June. This one should be pretty good.

2012 was an interesting year. It was sort of a turning point in my career. I was still shooting a ton of nightlife but I was dating someone who lived in LA so I was out there a lot shooting naked women and things like that. I did my first solo photo show in 2012 and I shot my first Village Voice cover. I had some pretty cool opportunities shooting movie posters for Red Flag and The Yes Men Are Revolting and I had a ton of fun shooting music festivals like SXSW, Pitchfork and Musink.

2012 also had some disappointments. The second Vice Dos and Don’ts book came out and I had more than 70 photos in the book but they somehow forgot to credit me. They were really apologetic and I basically came up with an agreement with them that they would start letting me shoot actual documentary work for them. I ended up going to Puerto Rico to do a story on cockfighting. It’s probably some of the best work I have ever done but when I got home my editor had vanished. I don’t want to say too much but not only did the story never get published but I also didn’t end up shooting anything for Vice again for several years.

I also got to do a story on Hurricane Sandy for Gawker. I went with a Gawker writer to Breezy Point and Rockaway Beach and looked at the devastation and recovery effort after the storm. It was and incredible, heartbreaking trip and I came back with some work that I was really proud of. Unfortunately right around that a certain sex tape was published that ultimately led to the end of Gakwer as a website. My editor left shortly after and the work was never published (amazingly I finally got paid for it in 2016!)

I did some other proper journalism in 2012 as well. During Hurricane Sandy I actually walked over the Williamsburg Bridge and photographed a flooded Lower East Side in the middle of the storm. I covered the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, took a bunch of photos at the NFL Draft and went to both the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest AND the after party.  I covered a bunch of conventions including NYC Comic Con, a couple tattoo conventions, Exxxotica Chicago and of course the Adult Entertainment Expo.

I shot a bunch of “celebrity” stuff in 2012. I shot celebrity portraits at SXSW, I photographed Hannibal Buress’ 30th birthday party for him, I photographed backstage at the MTV Woodie Awards and I spent the day shooting Donald Glover when Childish Gambino played the Brooklyn Bandshell. I got to shoot Alec Baldwin doing stuff twice for NYU and I photographed that dude from that band Orgy hanging out in a playground.

I am gonna stop now but shout out to Sailor Jerry and the Village Voice who were by far my best clients back then and I should of course mention that there’s a ton of NSFW stuff in this gallery. I shot a TON of porn stars in 2012 including this great shoot with my girlfriend at the Salton Sea, the first time I ever shot my pal Lily LaBeau and one of my favorite shoots ever with Dana DeArmond. Okay, seriously I am gonna wrap this up now, but did I mention that the Voice made me photograph One Direction? Hilarious.

Click here to see all my best photos from 2012!

PS. I should mention that there are no photos from the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos because I am working on a juggalo book so all those photos ended up in their own folder and I forgot to add them to this gallery.

 

 

Comments (0)