Dirty Detroit: Behind The Music - Part 2

Day Two – Saturday, February 10th, 2007


After the show (and a lot more wine), Chip and I decide to run amok through the hotel and shoot a bunch of nude stuff with Sarah. We also have Kathy (see link to the right) and her friend Stephanie in tow. I decide to “produce” with Chip shooting Sarah and Kathy shooting “behind the scenes” and assisting Chip. Kathy took this shot. It’s approximately the moment that we hatch this plan. It's also 1am.

So we did. Sarah naked in the stairwell. Sarah naked in the hallway. Sarah naked in the elevator for about 30 minutes stopping on every floor.

Here’s just a few of the things that happened:

- Door to the elevator opens and guy with delivery food is standing there. We all ignore him and Chip continues to shoot a naked Sarah. As the door is closing, the guy says “Holy shit.” We die laughing.

- Door to the elevator opens and guy doesn’t even flinch and gets in and heads towards the back. We laugh and say something like, “Sorry, man." He just stands there and says something like “Whatever, I’m cool.” Meanwhile, I’ve got the elevator stopping at every floor to buy Chip and Sarah time. So about 10 minutes later, our guest says, “Can someone eventually hit L.” We die laughing.

- Stopped by “Hotel Security” - guy with a goatee and his taller buddy with a goatee. We’re all in the elevator with Sarah who, of course, is naked. I’m holding her coat. Door to the lobby opens and guy with goatee says (after some time) “Do you expect us just to stand here?” and I say “Yep.” We ignore him and they just stand there. Eventually, he motions for me to come out of the elevator. I do. It’s 4am and he’s trying to take his job seriously, you know with all the Crackheads and Goth kids all over the place. I look at him. He looks at me. Chip keeps shooting. He says “OK, here’s the deal, she just can’t be TOTALLY naked.” I say “OK, no problem, we’ll go back upstairs.” As I walk towards the elevator, his buddy, who has not uttered a word, says “...thanks.” We die laughing.

- Goth kids scoff at us. We die laughing.

We went upstairs and shot tons more as evidenced by my and Kathy’s shots below:







There’s that goofball again…this is 5am…Chip is tired...

Day Three – Sunday, February 11th, 2007


The hangover special downstairs in the Crackhead diner. I am eating grease, drinking something approximating coffee and reading about Ted Bundy. It doesn’t get any better than this…

It’s sort of one of those “you had to be there” scenarios, but for those of us there, we had a lot of fun, got to hang out for a while in a foreign place and basically act like 15 year olds…

TWO REAL SHOTS (ok, one and a half...)


Normally, at events like this I don't like to shoot. I like to have a beer and relax - off the clock, ya know...But I did want Sarah to be a part of the Chairs Series so, I hauled all my crap to Detroit. Sarah and I shot Saturday afternoon in my room. It took me about an hour to light and about 30 minutes to shoot. We laughed the whole time...and neither one of us would walk on the carpet with our bare feet. This is the goofball being all badass...


The only other "shot" that I took the whole weekend of a model posing. Melissa was shooting in the delapidated ballroom with Dan and Chip when I wandered in to observe. I actually saw Chip Willis prance across the checkered tile shooting Melissa as she pranced away from him. When they were finished, I climbed up on a chair (fair's fair) and snapped this shot of Melissa with my top-secret camera. I love the way Melissa looks with the coat, her skin tone and the tile floor of the ballroom. It’s just that I gotta talk to Kodak about this new technology...