I was reviewing some magazines on the fetish scene when I came across a copy of the US Bizarre magazine. It was nice but I could see they needed some help with there photography as there images were not very engaging and the way the magazine was designed looked sort of outdated. I discovered that they were publishing out of Garden Grove, California which was not to far away from me at that time, So I called the magazine and got an interview with the owner Jerry. I went over to see him with my art director & friend David Sparks. We walk into the offices of Bizarre magazine and the owner Jerry was in his office sitting down behind a large desk wearing a red dress and had a wig on plus was smoking a pipe. It was not out of the norm for me to see (Man in Drag) as in Shakespearean times men use to play the part of women and in a pantomime Cinderella the ugly sisters were all played by men, so this did not through me off my game. I told Jerry that I thought his magazine was great but he could do with some help in the design and that we could bring some new life to his photography with my creativity. I had been working with Versatile Fashions and Dita Von Teese. Plus, I was also a contributing photographer to Penthouse® magazine which had given me a lot of credibility.
He just tossed the magazine at me and told me of the budget and said if I wanted I could go do it, “Lets make a deal”. We made a contract and David and I went to work on the next issue for him. We worked on the redesign and all new images for the next 3 issues’ then David decided to leave the magazine. I was asked by Jerry the owner who could replace David as the Art Director.
I thought why not me I know how it all works and the magazine has a formula and all the pages are set out ready, all I had to do is fill the pages with content. It sounds ezy but there is some work getting all the content together. It’s one thing knowing what to publish and another how and why to publish it.
For the next issue, I contacted two of my Penthouse® Pet friends Julie Strain & Seana Ryan and talked to then about being in the next issue. Julie had this fantastic Heavy Metal outfit so she wanted to be on the cover. Seana had a boyfriend at the time that had this amazing bike he had just built and wanted me to use it as a prop in the shots. I set the shooting day up and shot these images. It went fantastic the girls did a super job like they always do. I shot all the images in my open-air studio at the time. No use of strobes so the shoot was quick and the model’s could move about the bike and give me all the looks I needed with no issue’s with setting up and moving lights about. The magazine got rave reviews and that’s the story behind the picture.
