I took a photo of Guns N Roses.
I wonder if I ever told this story on here before, but here it goes anyway...
I was working NY Fashion Week for some fashion blog and they sent me to the John Varvatos store on the Bowery where CBGBs used to be. They don't ever have shows there but for some reason Guns N Roses were going to play small set to a hundred people or so. The fashion blog told me I was on the list, but of course when I got there I wasn't.
I started texting my editor while standing near the front of the club watching the bouncers turn everyone away including some finance bro who offered them $500. It was hopeless. I wasn't getting in.
But then I had an idea... I noticed the bouncers were both wearing Pabst Blue Ribbon beanies. It was February in NYC and absolutely freezing and I knew they both didn't bring those hats from home. It only meant one thing... PBR was sponsoring the event. I immediately texted the NYC marketing rep, Daniel, to see if he was there and he could get me in. I saw him walk over to the door woman who had the list and she just shook her head.
Daniel came over to me to say hi and apologize for not being able to get me in. They were way over capacity. As he was telling me this, one of the bouncers came over to him and asked him for another PBR hat. He told the bouncer he'd give him one if he left me in. The bouncer who had just turned down $500, just opened the rope and let me in for a promotional PBR hat. I was in.
I was one of the only photographers there and the place was packed with models and celebrities and the show was actually great. I think Axl was the only original member but he sounded exactly how he did when I was a kid and they were one of my favorite bands. It was an amazing experience and I actually ended up with his handwritten setlist which I still have somewhere.
After the show I felt no loyalty to that fashion blog since they couldn't get me in and ended up selling the photos to TMZ. The place was so packed and the heat was cranked because it was so cold outside so it was sweaty as hell and they titled the photos "Sweat Child O Mine" which is objectively hilarious, but also kinda shitty.
The next day my google alert for myself popped up because a GNR forum was talking about the TMZ coverage and blaming me for the whole thing, so I went on there and told them how good I thought the show was and linked to my coverage on my own website, and I actually ended up selling a bunch of prints from the show to GNR super fans.
So yeah, I got paid like $2k from TMZ, made another $1000+ selling prints and then I think I made like $100 from the fashion blog who ran them as well. Oh, and I also got a PBR hat which is apparently priceless.
The end.
When I moved I found a couple late 90s wrestling shirts and put em on eBay. A D-Generation X shirt just sold and I included a note with the shirt that said "I've got two words for you... Thank you!"
I found a photo lab receipt from 2003 in an old coat. I think I’ve owned that coat since literally 1995.
In related news, my first ever paid job was at a Ritz Camera at the Pentagon City mall.
I took photos of some Kid Rock fans.
I got hired to photograph a Kid Rock music festival in Nashville about a month before Trump was elected the first time. The festival wasn't particularly political but ten years later Kid Rock is the cultural pinnacle of MAGA.
I generally think photos of homeless people are pretty exploitive unless the work really serves a purpose (Suitcase Joe's work in LA's Skid Row comes to mind), but I shot these in college when I was living in Richmond, VA and I took them for a local homeless shelter. I don't actually remember what exactly they were because it was over twenty years ago, but I don't look back on them with any regret.
I took a photo of the director of everyone's favorite new movie, Melania, Brett Ratner. We all know and love him from Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2, sexually assaulting multiple women and of course his latest hit, the Epstein Files.
Five years ago today I went on a date with a woman I met on a dating app. We ate delivery Chinese food in her Greenpoint living room since it was still the pandemic. I could not imagine how much the next five years would change my life. We left NYC, bought a house, both went through serious health scares and finally got engaged.
15 years ago a German book publisher reached out to me about doing a book with them. They mostly published books of erotic photography so when I took the lunch meeting with them I told them I wasn't interested in doing something like that. I pitched them on a concept I had called DRINK FIGHT FUCK which was a book of my most insane photos titled after an infamous punk song by the more infamous GG Allin. I would try and desexualize nudity by putting those photos next to fight photos and try and tell a story of just a completely chaotic life, mostly centered around downtown NYC in the mid 2000s.
The publisher loved the idea. He told me that the erotic photography was what paid the bills, but he didn't get into publishing to do that. He wanted to make art. He told me he didn't care if it lost money, he would just print it at the same time as a known money maker.
I took him at his word and we worked on the book for two years. We had countless calls and made dozens of edits to the book. We hadn't laid out the text yet or designed the cover and we were still going back and forth about a few things, but he was coming to NYC and we were finally going to sign the contract.
I should have known something was up when he told me to meet him at an art gallery instead of his hotel room, but when I got there he gave me the news. His distributor wouldn't take the book. He said sex was fine, violence was fine, but sex and violence is unacceptable. And that was just that. Two years down the drain. He didn't try and work with me on another concept or try and find another distributor. He just dropped me and moved on to some bullshit book like Sexy Legs Vol. 3 or whatever.
I will say that in retrospect it's probably good that book never came out as it was wildly fucked up and I probably would have been canceled or at least sued at some point for it. Let's just say I have some photos of celebrities in some situations they probably wouldn't want to be made public...
But yeah, I still have the edit, and I actually still update it from time to time with new stuff. I don't think I would ever publish that exact book now, but I do think there is a book in there somewhere. My 20s (and 30s honestly) were fucking chaotic, and I do want to tell that story eventually...
I took a photo of Mark Duplass chilling the fuck out.
Back in the day I covered the SXSW Film Festival and I got invited to all these press junkets to interview directors and stars of movies and Mark and his brother Jay were there promoting something. They had been doing interviews all morning so when I took them out to these couches on the balcony just outside the junket they both immediately laid down because they were just exhausted. They asked where to go for the photos and I told them just to lay there. I think the photo the LA Weekly/Village Voice ended up using was a shot of them both pretending to be asleep on the couches, but I shot black and white film photos of them as well just for myself and this one is my favorite.
If I can find the digital one I will throw it down below...
