I know I took these photos of the legendary Phoenix Marie on March 14th because the next day I went into quarantine and this was the last time I left my neighborhood for like three months. I actually used this date when I filed for unemployment because it was the last time I worked even though it wasn’t actually a paid shoot or anything. We were just making cool shit because we wanted to.
I have known Phoenix for a minute. I think Abella Danger introduced me to her at an Exxxotica in Chicago back in 2016 and we have been talking about taking photos since then. Glad it finally happened because she is hilarious and real easy to shoot and it was a great time. We took a million photos. Also I am pretty sure she can bench press me.
After the shoot we met up at a restaurant with Amy Anderssen (another person I have wanted to photograph for years) and that was the last time I have been in any sort of bar or restaurant for more than the time it takes to pick up food. It’s all very weird to think about.
Anyway, enough Covid talk, let’s get back to talking about the photos… As I mentioned we took a ton of photos. We did an outfit change at some point and during that second part of the shoot it started to get dark and the photos had a very different look to them from the first outfit so I decided to break them up. In this post you will be getting the first photos, but the second shoot is exclusive only to my site Girls of Driven By Boredom. I actually posted those photos last week so if you had an account you could have seen them by now. Girls of DBB also has all of these photos on it already, PLUS a few extra more explicit shots that are also exclusive to that site. And per always, they are in high resolution. I should also mention that there are a couple of very funny videos of Phoenix from this shoot on my OnlyFans and you can sign up for both sites for like $7 a month total or something. I would rather have more people signed up than a few people and charge them a bunch.
Oh, one more promotional thing that has nothing to do with this shoot… I have three new zines that you can pre-order now! I will do a whole post about this once they are printed (they are supposed to be shipped to me on Wednesday), but for now I just wanted to mention it. Enough selling you on shit, let’s look at some photos!
If you actually read this madness that I write with all the photos I post you will be familiar with this lost folder of photos from a 2019 trip to LA. I even mentioned it in my last post. Well, today we get one step closer to clearing out that folder, but I think there is still three more shoots left. I would bust them out all in one week or something but I am averaging like one photoshoot a month right now so having unpublished stuff is probably a good idea for now…
Anyway, this shoot was probably the most fun of that whole trip. I reached out to the amazing Corwin Prescott who always shoots in the most beautiful places to ask him if he had any ideas for places to shoot in LA and he recommended Malibu Creek State Park. I googled it and was very excited about this swimming hole that is pretty deep in the park and I reached out to Jade Baker about going with me. I love taking her photo and she seemed like the perfect person to bring on a mini adventure.
Our plan was to find the first place to shoot that we could and get a bunch of digital stuff and then hike to the swimming hole and try and shoot photos there if we could manage it without people seeing or we would just go swimming and still have the first shoot. Perfect plan.
We realized we could hike down a hill to the creek and there wouldn’t be anyone who could see us from the main trail. I shot her climbing a burnt tree and then we took some shots in the creek itself but it was such a sunny day that it was hard to get anything well exposed. I could give you a little explanation of the Zone System here but I won’t because I’m not a monster. So we found a fallen tree in the shade near the creek and did the rest of our digital shoot there. She had burnt tree all over her at this point but it actually made for some cool photos.
When we finally reached the swimming hole it was predictably crowded and we couldn’t shoot any nudes or anything, but the water was wonderful and we swam a bunch and took some more 35mm photos of her on the rocks and things like that. I got to jump off a giant rock myself which was real fun and there were a bunch of people cliff diving which was also entertaining to watch.
After our swim we hiked back to our cars and said our goodbyes and I couldn’t wait to get the film developed. I got so much good 35mm on that trip that I published it all on Girls of Driven By Boredom. (That’s a direct link to the gallery since it was posted over a year ago.) So if you want to see all the photos we shot after the creek, or the creek photos in high resolution (plus some bonus explicit shots) make sure you check out that site. It will also give you a good idea of what shoots I still have left to publish!
Ps. I just realized that none of these except for a couple of her climbing a tree are safe enough to post on the main page so make sure you click through because this one image below is not going to give you any sort of idea to what these photos actually look like. Even the one below has a nipple in it if you look real carefully. My bad.
We walked a while until we found some mostly abandoned areas. People could probably see us from above but only if they were really looking. Occasionally people would walk along the beach but we could see them in the distance and would stop for a few minutes and cover up. It was a little cold to actually get in the water (it was January) but we got some nice shots climbing the cliff face and with the water in the background.
Aiden asked me to get a clip of the two of them making out in front of the beach for her OnlyFans so of course I obliged and then months later the world ended and I started an OnlyFans so I can continue to pay my rent and I put that same video on mine today if that is something you want to watch (you do).
Also, as always, these photos are available in high resolution on Girls of DBB and there are a handful of extra more explicit shots on there as well. You’re welcome.
Okay, I honestly don’t really have anything else to say but it was great shooting with these ladies and I can’t wait to do it again one day. We really had a great location and a great time and now you get to see all the pretty photos so rejoice, etc.
An LA trip I went on in July 2019 still haunts me because I keep forgetting about the folder. Usually I organize everything by date but this trip I shot so much stuff I gave it it’s own folder and it’s at the very end of my 2019 folder and none of this matters except that when I am looking for stuff to post I keep missing that folder and there’s some great stuff in there like today’s shoot with Jane Wilde. I still have three shoots left from that trip to post after this one, but I wrote them down now so hopefully I will remember to get them up soon. Moving on.
The first time I shot Jane we took some really cool stuff walking around NYC. She grew up here so she was back visiting family and we have a pretty fun adventure. I was very excited to shoot her again so when I was back in LA I of course hit her up. She was hanging out with her friend Nigel and I knew him from Twitter so he said I could come by and shoot at his place. He’s got a pool and a rad dog and it was a good time.
On the minus side it was really fucking bright which led to nearly all the early photos we shot having these really harsh shadows, or Jane squinting, or in a lot of cases both. We problem solved by shooting in the shade and got some nice stuff that way and later in the day we ended up getting a few more shots in the pool when the sun was lower in the sky. Don’t worry, we got plenty of stuff you guys will enjoy.
Speaking of stuff you will enjoy, if you want to see a bunch of underwater stuff we shot I edited a bunch of it together and you can buy it for like $5 on Girls of DBB. Or you can subscribe to my OnlyFans and the footage is on there too, just not edited together and you gotta search for it because I put it up a while ago but it shouldn’t be too hard to find. Lastly, back on Girls of DBB, I posted all of these photos on there yesterday in high resolution, plus some explicit shots that are only on that site. You know the deal. With no events to photograph this stuff is all my income so I gotta be extra annoying about this stuff.
Okay, let’s get to some pictures. You will like them because Jane is really easy to take pictures of. It’s just a fact. Ps. Thanks to Nigel for letting me shoot at his place and pet his dog.
For a few years I had two really hot neighbors that both happened to be two of my favorite models. It made my life very convenient especially when I was about to drop off some film and I needed to finish a roll. I would just hit them up on the way to my film lab, take a few photos and be on the move. I have taken so many film photos of both of them, but for some reason I have only really published one full shoot with Kirra. Sammy on the other hand, I have published many, many, many, many shoots with… and I don’t plan on stopping.
Kirra moved (she’s still pretty close – there’s some new photos of her here) but Sammy is still in the neighborhood and we are still shooting. When I sent her these photos we already started talking about our next shoot. And if there’s anything I know about my fans is that they love her. Honestly I get messages pretty often about more and more photos (and video) of her. I am happy to oblige.
One good thing about Sammy is that we almost always shoot outside anyway. She seems to love getting naked in public and I love shooting that stuff so it’s very ideal in the Covid era. She also happens to have a great rooftop for shoots which brings me to this post. I shot her in two different outfits on her roof and we even shot a dumb TikTok and I took some nice behind the scenes video of her changing outfits which you can find on my OnlyFans.
Speaking of my OnlyFans, I just put up another video of her today that I shot the last time we went out into the streets. Mask on, tits out, a 2020 vibe. You can also find this shoot in high res on Girls of Driven By Boredom. If you sign up for both of those and pick the 6th month discount option I think it’s only $6 a month total. Like help me out and get some fun nudes in your life. Okay, enough promotion. Let’s get to the photos.
10 years ago today one of my best friends died. I have had too many friends die, but Ross Harman was like a brother to me. I managed his band, The Gaskets, for six years of my life and when he died I promised myself I would make sure people remembered his music and I sort of think I failed at that. I set up a crowdfunding campaign and we raised a bunch of money and were able to put out three records in his honor. We released his solo album and another compilation of songs that were on his computer when he died as well as a double length LP of other artists covering his music. It was truly incredible, except that after selling the first 100 or so those records have sat in my apartment for the last 9 years gathering dust.
We built a website to honor him with a bunch of his music that existed up until last fall when my website got hacked and it was easier just to build the site again than fix it. But here we are on the anniversary of his death and the site doesn’t exist. The Gaskets site is down too which now links to a Wikipedia full of dead links.
Last night I saw someone Tweet about the band Sparks and I went to an old hard drive to see if I could find a video of the Gaskets covering one of their songs. I loved that cover and I was sure I had it somewhere. I ultimately couldn’t find it, but in my search I pulled out the live concert DVD I produced way back in 2006. It is to this day my greatest accomplishment even though I still have a few hundred copies taking up space in my apartment as well. I watched a few minutes of it just to see the beginning and I ended up watching the whole thing. It made me miss that time in my life so much and it made me miss Ross even more. It was such a great feeling to be working with your favorite band every day and seeing how much people loved them again really moved me.
I didn’t even realize I was watching it 10 years to the day after Ross died.
I woke up to a Facebook notification reminding me today was the day. I am certainly not one to believe in any sort of spirituality but I couldn’t believe the coincidence. It really was incredible. I don’t think I have watched it since Ross died and suddenly I am watching it on his anniversary. I don’t cry very often, but when I went back and reread what I wrote about Ross on here 10 years ago tears spilled down my face. I loved that motherfucker so much.
Despite my failure as a manager to make the Gaskets a household name or to do more to spread Ross’ music since he passed there are some very good things that came out of the Gaskets. The other member of the band, Teddy Blanks, has gone on to great success as both a graphic designer and a director after blending design and film doing credits for countless movies and TV shows. His first credit sequence? That live concert DVD. His solo music has scored many films including Tiny Furniture, the breakout film from Lena Dunham (who in college directed a Gaskets video) and Red Flag made by his current directorial partner Alex Karpovsky. For me the Gaskets turned out to be the beginning of my photography career. I always thought I would work in music, but I went to school for photography because I thought it would be a good skill to have in the music industry while I as at the same time trying to figure out my place in the world. Music didn’t work out for me but all the first photos I ever published were for the Gaskets. I am not sure I would have ever made it as a photographer if I hadn’t managed that band.
I had no idea what this blog was going to be about when I started writing it this morning. I actually took a break after the first sentence because it hurt too much to write. I don’t even know what the point of this was, but I had to write something. And I figured I could use this as an excuse to promote Ross’ music again even though not that much of it is online right now.
Secondly, The Gaskets YouTube channel has not been updated since a few days after Ross’ death when we uploaded a fun interview they did with Blender in 2007 but it’s still a pretty good place to see some of the Gaskets music. A bunch of it is on Spotify and things like that but The Gaskets were one of the best live bands I have ever seen so it’s a good chance to see some of that.
Thirdly, please listen to this Teddy Blanks song. It is the only song on the tribute album that isn’t a cover. This song Teddy wrote about Ross using music he found on Ross’ computer. It makes my eyes water every time I hear it and it’s been in my head all day today.
I also promise that in the near future I am gonna get his website back up and I will do another post about that when we do. His tribute album has never been made available digitally and we need to make that happen. Hopefully it and the Gaskets site will return soon.
Lastly I am going to leave you with a couple of videos. The first is for the Gaskets song Left Hand. Teddy wrote it about Ross’ drinking problem that ultimately lead to his death. Ross never talked about what that meant to him but he spent weeks by himself painting and animating this video. It means a great deal to me. The second video is from the Tribute album by Ross’ favorite artist Matt Mahaffey aka sElf. I couldn’t believe he said yes to recording this when randomly I reached out to him out of the blue. I have no idea who uploaded this but I really appreciate it.
Please take a second to listen to Ross’ music. He was a brilliant fucked up man who I will never stop thinking about. I love you man.
It’s 2am at the moment and I am writing this from a small beach town called Lewes, Delaware where I have been for the last week. I have been seeing old friends, my parents from a distance and doing as little as possible. It’s been pretty great. We are leaving tomorrow and I figured I would get an update up in the morning before we leave so I am writing this now, in the middle of the night.
As you may have noticed I haven’t done many shoots during the coronavirus but a couple of months ago I got a text from Alex around midnight wanting to shoot in some hotel in midtown. I had wanted to shoot her forever and I grabbed a mask and some cameras and was out the door. She wanted me to shoot a bunch of weird video content for her social media and stuff and I couldn’t really say no so we shot a bunch of random stuff and I shot a ton of 35mm and a handful of digital stuff as we were going. The whole thing was kinda madness and I got glitter all over my gear but we shot a bunch of cool stuff.
I am leaving NYC tomorrow for the first time in January. I honestly am the most excited about any vacation I have ever been on despite the fact that I am not really taking a vacation from anything but sitting on my couch watching 8 hours of Netflix a day. I am just kinda losing my mind. Because of this trip I have been quarantining so I can hide out in Delaware with some friends from childhood and see my parents who retired there. That’s why I spent last night watching the fucking Republican National Convention instead of out taking photos of the protests for the attempted execution of Jacob Blake. But watching the RNC gave me an idea for an update before I left town that has (almost) no nudity in it.
When quarantine first happened I had this idea of being productive and trying to better my life, which I obviously gave up on, but one of the things I did was buy a negative scanner and start scanning a bunch of old 35mm negatives I found in a box. It was a range of eras of photos, but pretty much high school and college. I think the earliest stuff is from the mid 90’s and the latest stuff is photos from the 2004 RNC when it was in New York. I wouldn’t move to the city for two more years but I was managing a band at the time and we booked a show in New York so we could join the protests. The photos aren’t very good, and the scans are worse, but it is very cool to see photos of Union Square before I even knew what Union Square was.
After a couple of hours of scanning I realized that the scans were pretty garbage and gave up. I probably shouldn’t have bought a negative scanner for $100. I posted a few of the images to Twitter and then moved on with my life. But the RNC reminded me I had this folder on my desktop and I figured this would be a good post before I skipped town for a week. So let’s break down what you are looking at…
The first group of photos I didn’t even actually take. I started a punk record label when I was in high school and our first, and by far most successful release was a 7″ compilation of DC punk bands called Raise The Flag harDCore Volume 1. Someone actually uploaded it to YouTube if you want to hear it. I was only 15 when we put the record together. Raise The Flag 2 was in the production stages when my business partner’s car broke down. Without telling me he spent all the money we had for the record on fixing his car. That ended the label and our friendship. (We did actually reconnect in college and are still close friends. Check out his new band!) These photos are from the Raise The Flag 2 cover art photo shoot. I am not sure who took these photos or why I didn’t do it. The whole reason I picked up a camera in the first place was to shoot DC punk bands but I guess I wanted to be in it. The actual label of the record was going to be a photo of me wearing only a DC flag so I sort of spun around while you listened to the album. Oh, all these photos were taken at the very steep stairs made famous by the movie the Exorcist!
Up next in the gallery is the RNC protest photos, the only stuff color in the group, followed by some of the earliest nudes I ever shot. I had an assignment in college to shoot something with infrared film. For some reason it makes veins look really pronounced so I shot some nudes of a friend of mine and I think somewhere I still have the prints of these that I made for the assignment and they actually look pretty cool. An old Polaroid I took of her is actually on the inside cover my Instaxxx book and might actually predate these photos by a few months.
The next photo is of this band the Infertil that were on that first Raise The Flag album. They ended up getting in a fight during their set and their drummer jumped over his drum set and into the crowd. I didn’t want to stop taking photos, but obviously I wasn’t gonna let fellow AV PUNX crew members get fucked with, so I am actually kicking someone at the same exact time as I am taking this photo. It was the first, but not the last time I had to fight with a camera in my hand. Twenty years later that same drummer actually ended up playing drums for my old band Fucking Bullshit. After that we have some photos from the Rolling Thunder bike rally in DC. I believe these photos are from the 2000 rally. And then there is a single photo from a WWF Monday Night Raw taping I went to in college.
From there there is a mix of band photos and protest photos (Edit: I realized after I posted this that there’s only one protest shot here. There were more scans but I guess I didn’t include them in the gallery) which is pretty much 99% of what I shot in high school. We got a Leonard Peltier protest, photos of Rancid, Motörhead and Nashville Pussy, plus some shots of my friend Crazy Willy and a single self portrait! Check 16 year old me out! The gallery ends with some photos from Warped Tour 2002. These photos were actually on a CD I found in the box with the negatives. I covered Warped Tour ’98 for the zine I ran in high school and I think I went in ’97 too, but I got invited in 2002 by a girl I worked with at Ben & Jerry’s. I didn’t really want to go, but I did want to hang out with her so I requested a press pass so that I could at least shoot some bands at the same time. The CD had shots of the Casualties, Bad Religion and NOFX, but the BR & NOFX photos sucked, probably because I don’t like pop punk. I shot digital photos of these too and some of those are better but the camera was such garbage that they aren’t really worth looking at.
Okay, this is a weirdly long post for some shitty scans of some decades old photos. I still need to plug the shit that is paying my rent right now. If you like 35mm work you can check out my latest gallery on Girls of DBB which is all the NSFW 35mm stuff I have shot since February. I also uploaded a 3 minute compilation of old Vines from when nudity was allowed on Vine. You can buy that whole clip for $5, or you can see the three parts that make up that longer video on my OnlyFans. You can get access to everything on my OnlyFans for $5 so that seems like the better value, but you gotta make your own decisions. Oh, and speaking of OnlyFans I queued up posts for the next week so while I am on vacation you will continue to get content. Gonna try to find a gallery for Girls of DBB to upload when I am gone as well.
No, she’s not dead or anything, I just did three shoots with her on the same day and this is the third one of them. You can see part one and part two via those links. It was a very productive day at my friend Eddy’s house in LA where we shot for several hours with a few outfit changes and kinda killed it I think. The second I saw her at a party I knew I wanted to shoot her and we got a ton of content out of it and now you have seen it all!
And by all, I mean, if you sign up for Girls of DBB you can see it all, because there aren’t any actual nude photos in here because I saved them all for the pay site because I am a monster and I need to pay my rent somehow. Aside from selling books and prints and pay sites I haven’t made a penny shooting photos since I sold a video of police brutality to the New York Times months ago. That is not super ideal for my life. I got a new zine thing coming out pretty soon, but I need some help with the design so we aren’t there yet.
Anyway, I really like a bunch of these photos and I think you guys will too assuming you like looking at photos of hot people which I assume you do because you are on this website. Maybe I’m wrong. Who is to say? I obviously haven’t posted anything other than hot people in a while. Hopefully I can come up with something soon though, aside from taking photo of my pet fish.
