I flew out to Orlando, Florida on October 13th for a two day photo shoot with A Day To Remember. This photo shoot was for all their new album cycle press images. I was stoked not only because this is one of my favorite bands to work for, but because my good friend/photographer Matt Lingo came along with me. I have never flown with someone else for work, I am always riding solo- so this was a pleasant change.

Anyway, we flew out on the night of October 13th with an arrival time of 10:00am in Orlando Florida. Red Eyes rule, because you don’t waste a day flying. On the other hand, you waste your next day being tired as shit. We got to the airport a little early just in case we ran into any troubles when boarding. This was my first time using the new TSA full body scanners, which I will never use again, as I value you my health too much. But you basically stand in a big X-ray and do gang sign with your hands at about chest height while facing a wall. After I went through, the TSA guard told me to stop and not go any farther. I looked at Matt and laughed, here we go again. The male TSA agent looked me in the eyes and said “your butt”. I just started laughing. His face was serious as ever. He had an ear piece in that he kept touching, as if he couldn’t hear exactly what his colleague was trying to relay to him. I stood there staring at him, waiting for him to say something else. He looked at me again with the most serious face ever and said “butt, your button”. What the heck is this guy trying to say? I laughed at him again in confusion, he wasn’t stoked and went back to trying to listen to his boss as I stood there. Matt already passed through the security point, I looked over at him and yelled “They have a problem with my butt” while pointing to my bottom with both hands. He smirked and went back to his cell phone text world. The TSA man looked at me once more and said “do you have a wallet?” I patted myself and responded with “no sir, I took everything out earlier”. He said “I am going to have to pat you down”. I assumed he meant he was going to have to feel my ass- nope, everywhere. I don’t have a problem with TSA giving me the friskiest frisk ever, it doesn’t bother me, I actually think it’s pretty funny. I started laughing cause the dude went straight for my dick and gave it a stiff shove with the back of his hands. This guy knows what makes him happy. I can see how people feel like they are getting violated by the TSA agent, but I just like to think of it as – this dude gets paid to touch my dick, he is a legal male prostitute, what a loser. The TSA theatrics continued for a few more moments before I was told to continue.

I purchased a new mic for the 7D the night before. I figured if we are going to record audio, we might as well have it be clear.

I had plans of making a behind the scenes video for this shoot and possibly creating a second tutorial DVD with some of the footage. My girlfriend also gave me some Haribo gummy bears she had gotten for free, she had something like 100 sampler packs of them at home, so good. Thanks Becky!

I tried passing out during the flight but I didn’t have much luck. The girl sitting next to me was sick, coughing, had a dog, smelly McDonald’s “food”, and music that was louder than the jet’s engine. really lady? What a selfish ignorant demon. If you are sick, why would you eat McDonald’s? That’s like taking sleeping pills before going for a run. Oh well, as long as she didn’t get me sick I didn’t care, I just don’t understand people sometimes. I pulled my hood over my head and tucked it under my chin and listened to some Ratata. Couldn’t sleep so I worked on some possible light set ups and positing for the shoot but it was mostly just mindless doodles that wasted more ink than paper. After I was bored with my doodle session I pulled my laptop out and typed up a rough outline for the DVD. Outline finished, crashed out and woke up as we landed in Charlotte. Our layover in Charlotte was at something like 7:00am EST.

We hung out in the terminal for a bit. Matt fell asleep in his seat and I don’t even remember what I did, it was a blurry mess of sleeping with my eyes open, I was so exhausted. We boarded our flight and I passed out immediately and woke up once we landed in Orlando. I felt like a new human! So refreshed, I knew it was temporary, but i felt so good. Matt and I got off the plane and I phoned Sal to pick us up. He took a bit longer than expected but he eventually swooped us from the port and we headed to Gage’s house to steal a vagabond from him. I felt bad, it was literally a hit and run, no time to hang- but I know I’ll see him again soon. We got some sandwiches at a really good sandwich shop around the corner from Gage’s. I got a turkey sandwich with stuffing and cranberries, so good. Off to Ocala. It was a a little over an hour to drive there, but the sheltered white people billboards made the drive all the more interesting.

Once we got to Ocala we checked in at our hotel and settled in.

That didn’t last long as we had some work to do! Back in the car with Sal for some scouting downtown.

We had a meeting with Jeremy and Kevin to discuss the concepts and then went shopping for some costumes. By the time we finished everyone was hungry- so we went to their favorite hibachi place, and it was amazing. The guy cooking our food was hilarious, he had a smart ass remark for everything he did. The only one I can remember was “hey I am going to pee in you drink” and as Matt looked up at him he bounced a pea into his drink.

That night we went back to the hotel and got the wrinkles out of the costumes- this is me being a thug.

My other assistant for the shoot, another Matt, also showed up that night to hang. He has the best license plate ever.

I had never met the newest Matt addition to our team, but we talked a few weeks prior and he seemed like a hard worker.

Our first day of shooting was full of different locations throughout Ocala and Gainesville. We started in downtown Ocala. That morning some old sheltered white folk were holding a picket sign protest right next to all of our locations. I don’t really mind when old people protest, I feel like it is their last cry out for help before they rot away and die. No need to fight the old fading mindsets of this country, they will be dead soon enough- it’s just a matter of time.

We set up a giant softbox so that Matt could hold it and walk with ease while the Vagabond was on his back- this kept us mobile.

***ill post the images from the first location as soon as they are released, but for now…. I won’t. Soon enough!

We ate lunch at Zaxby’s, and on our way there we ran into some traffic. This local’s tractor fell out of their trailer in the middle of the road- one of those things that you imagine happens, but you never get to witness it.

After lunch we all hopped into four different cars and drove to Gainesville. I rode with Neil. He was from Gainesville, so he navigated us to our locations. It took us about an hour and then some to get there and find parking. We were on campus for this first shot. There was a two-way tunnel that ran underneath the highway and served as a safe crossing for the college students. It would usually be very high in traffic, but luckily for us there was some sort of event going on, and only a few people needed to get through.

The Matts and Neil helped me out by being my test subjects. My first set-up didn’t work well, the ceilings were not tall enough to get everyone in the band lit.

I switched it to a sitting down position. Kevin wasn’t fond of sitting down, so he is doing some sort of epic squat in the back. Not quite sure what he was doing, but it ended up looking awesome.

We headed to a small body of water not more than five minutes from the tunnel. Again, the images for this are not released, I’ll post ’em up once they are

We drove down the highway a few miles to catch the sun as it was setting. There was a bald eagle and next to us on one of the telephone poles. Eagles are so epic.

A simple straight forward band image, nothing ground breaking- but I always need a few of these “safe” images.

After everything was done with we headed back to Ocala for the night. Keaton randomly texted me that night- he was driving through Florida and saw I was in the area via Twitter. He said we should meet up- totally down! Twitter for the win. He came over for an hour two and kicked it with the me, Matt, Sal and Alex. We didn’t really do anything of significance, just hung out and caught up on each others lives. I hadn’t seen him in at least a year, so it was a pleasant surprise! We tried to go to Jackass 3 that night, but it was sold out.

For our second day of shooting we headed to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. Prior to this shoot, I did not even know that alligator farms existed. Double J, one of the guys at Victory Records just sent me an e-mail after I requested basic concepts form him- and all it said was “two words, alligator farm”. I did some research a few days before, called the place and told them what we were doing. It took them a few days to get back to me, and we actually ended up finalizing the location the night before the shoot. It always ends up being last minute! No matter what I do. We had originally planned to do shoot at an indoor location in Ocala. However after talking it over with the guys, we decided to make a last minute change of plans and just go to St. Augustine for the day, as it was a over a three hour drive there, and another three hour drive back.

We met at Sal‘s hotel around 9:00am and carpooled in their old tour van from Ocala to St. Augustine.

Memory cards, gotta collect ’em all.

We made a pit stop at a Wal-Mart that was miles from the farm. We had to purchase their outfits! I spent a decent amount of money on five pairs of wells, five Dickies worksheets, five pairs of Dickies pants and two pairs of suspenders. I couldn’t afford to let them keep all of the clothes so we did our best to keep all the tags intact, or store them in a bag if they had to be removed.

When we first got to the Alligator Farm, we had some time to walk around, as they were not ready for us yet. The farm was awesome, crocs, gators, cool looking birds. So fun. I think our initial walk around scared the guys more than anything. I told them we would be shooting in the main pit. Which was basically a giant sandbox full of about 45 or so gators. They were skeptical- heck I was too, where would we go? I really didn’t know exactly what we were doing. All i knew is we were shooting with the gators.

They put us right in there with the gators. A lot closer than I thought we could get- but it was a pleasant surprise. I went in with the Farmers? Trainers? I am not sure what to call them, haha. But I went in with them first and they explained to me where we could and couldn’t go. It basically came down to this, everything I said or did, had to be run by Jim first. Then after I got the okay, I could relay my directions to the guys and position them how I wanted. We had to sign a waiver before we went in there as well. I don’t think anyone read it, but we all knew that we were signing our lives away.

Muscle man Jim here, moving gators like there is no tomorrow.

We did a few shots of the guys standing over the gator, squatting down and touching it, and a few with them standing behind it. This is the only one released so far, but I’ll post more as they come. I tried to vary the images as much as possible, while at the same time staying a safe distance from the gator. The guys were all scared- but no matter how scared they were, I was in the worst position. About a few feet from the gators mouth. The trainer behind me had a wooden stick that was used to direct the gators, and was standing guard if anything were to come up. Regardless, a wooden strike was not a reassuring form of self-defense against a ten foot alligator.

This is the third shoot I have done with A Day To Remember that had an audience. All along the fence to their left, our right- there were about fifty or so people watching. I had to Photoshop them out, but it was funny. One guys said “did they tell you that gators love bright colors” – referring to their tattoos. A good laugh for me- for the guys, more of a scare.

We also took a few images of the guys by the water, while all the gators were getting fed in the foreground. Again, I’ll post them when I am able to.

After we finished with the massive gators, they brought out a canvas bag with five baby gators in it. The guys had to hold them a special way, so that they didn’t get tagged by their razor sharp teeth. To keep it safe we also kept four of their five mouths tapped up. I Photoshopped out the tape in the final image, oh and I gave Kevin a belt! Actually I gave him a belt in all of the images.

Thank you so much to the people at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm for hooking it up. Nothing but a great team running the place. If you are ever in Florida, make a point to visit the farm, it’s amazing.

We grabbed some BBQ at Sonny’s on our way home. I ate too much and passed out for the rest of the ride back.

When we got back Matt and I got to work retagging all folding all the clothes. I soaked the boots in the tub to get the dirt off and dried them off nicely. We went to Wal-Mart and successfully returned everything. Mission accomplished!

That night Sal, Matt and I all decided to go see Jackass for the second time. This time we got there and got our tickets successfully. For some reason in Ocala, you have to get your ID checked three times before entering the theater. The last of which was by an armed police officer. What the hell? I just had my ID checked more times getting into a movie than I usually do getting on a plane. Crazy people these days. I didn’t really like the movie, but it was good entertainment. I think Jackass was a lot better when all the people on it did too many drugs.

Back to the hotel to crash for the night, and then Matt and I flew home the next day. Fun trip, good times, and hopefully Matt can travel with me more in the future.