The tattooed men in Rhys’ life: December

December: Colin Rigley, photographer, cat herder, senior staff writer at New Times

Our second photo shoot, featuring Colin clad in short shorts and a wife beater, felt completely different from the first shoot with Ryan. In the first place, we weren’t in public. I had asked all my Facebook friends if any of them had access to a sexy fainting couch and my buddy Mary Meserve-Miller almost instantly messaged me a photo of her own leopard print fainting couch, which was perfect for Colin’s shoot.

Also, Colin was a lot more nervous than Ryan, and incredibly embarrassed by what we were about to do. He’s much more comfortable behind the camera than lounging provocatively on a leopard print fainting couch in shorts he usually reserves for a silly Halloween costume.

Colin has three different sets of tattoos: a blue infinite symbol near his collarbone, symbols from The Standard Model of particle physics on his forearm, and a sleeve with a heart at the top and rose of Sharon flowers and vines trailing down from it. The latter part was done by Jillian Wefald of Traditional Tattoo in San Luis Obispo (who also did my tattoo), and is incredibly vibrant. I knew that it would photograph well.

Colin had to set up the tripod and camera, instruct me on the finer points of making sure the camera was focused on his face in each shot, and then hitting the shutter. I tried to stay out of his way during the set-up phase, then struggled to make sure his face remained in focus, while offering instructions like “purse your lips,” “your arm is blocking your face,” and “try kicking your feet in the air for this one.” It was tense and we were both impatient to be done, but ultimately we were both pleased with the results. I didn’t envy him the task of having to edit his own photo, but he decided to have fun with it. When we noticed there was a photograph in the background, Colin decided to Photoshop Rhys’ face into the image as a nice little Easter egg.

The tattooed men in Rhys’ life: November

PHOTO BY COLIN RIGLEY

November: Adriana Catanzarite, intern, Cal Poly journalism student

Since my toilet paper photo shoot had failed so tragically, we decided we’d have to do something toilet paper-themed for our final photo shoot featuring our intern Adriana.

Adriana had just gotten a tattoo maybe two weeks before the shoot, and Colin had the idea to create a wedding dress out of toilet paper and feature Adriana in an elegant pose while wearing the dress.

Our friend Pattea owns the gorgeous Old Edna Townsite which includes two bed and breakfasts, a gypsy wagon, several barns, a treehouse, and a wine tasting facility. Also, it just happens to be across the street from our house. I asked Pattea if she would mind if we used the townsite and she said to feel free to use it, as she has so many times before.

Colin bought several dozen rolls of toilet paper and we had Adriana put on a long blue slip which we would use to help shape the toilet paper dress. Jessica and I worked on the dress, taping it to the slip, and stretching individual rolls out toward the ground, like streamers, or a wedding dress train. It actually took less time and toilet paper than I thought it would—maybe 15 minutes and six rolls altogether—and we were all pretty pleased with the effect.

Adriana worked several different poses, even playing with the idea of draping toilet paper off her finger and arm and stretching it across her shoulders like a shawl. The time change hadn’t occurred yet but it was starting to get dark earlier and because we scheduled the photo shoot after work we were once again racing against the dying light. And fighting roosters.

For whatever reason, the roosters that wander around the property took a dislike to Jessica and one repeatedly chased, stalked, and lunged at her before and during the shoot. She responded by shuffling around and verbally mocking them all which I thought was a little harsh considering that her beef was really with the one rooster.

And then we were done. But not really because we still had a cover to shoot.

The tattooed men in Rhys’ life: September

PHOTO BY COLIN RIGLEY

September: Jenny Gosnell, graphic designer

We ultimately decided to include a handful of tattooed women in Rhys’ life when we realized that we wouldn’t have models to fill the calendar if we stuck with tattooed men. In order to stick with the title—“The Tattooed Men in Rhys’ Life”—we decided that all tattoed women in the calendar would be photographed wearing mustaches or beards.

Jenny was our very first tattooed lady. She has such a bright, bubbly personality that we decided a local candy store called FizzRocket—which has, conservatively, at least one hundred different flavors of soda—would be the perfect location for her shoot.

I bought a couple bucks worth of candy bling—a ring pop for her finger and edible candy necklace—and borrowed some black face paint from my half-sister who used it to paint on a mustache when she went trick or treating as Mario for Halloween.

Jenny wore her hair in pigtails and dressed in a nautical shirt to match the anchor tattoo on her right forearm.

The week prior, I’d approached the RocketFizz manager about the photo shoot, and received his permission. It was the only photo shoot that I actually worried we’d have a hard time obtaining permission for, but the manager was really accommodating.

Once we finally got started, the shoot happened really quickly, although we had to pause once or twice to clear a path for curious tourists cruising through the store. I didn’t think anyone would have much interest in visiting a candy store at 10 a.m. on a week day—I don’t know what it being a week day would have to do with candy demand but it seemed somehow even more obscene—but it was surprisingly crowded. I spent a good portion of the shoot eyeing the candy and salivating making it hard to focus on the shoot. But I’m just writing that off as a hazard of the job, which doesn’t actually have anything to do with real work.

The tattooed men in Rhys’ life: August

PHOTO BY COLIN RIGLEY

August: Damian Camacho, barista, DJ, poet

We like to joke that every time I talk to Damian I ask him to pose shirtless for a photo, which is funny, but it’s also sort of true. Last spring I asked Damian to pose in a Paradise Lost-inspired shoot as Lucifer engaged in a physical struggle against god for the newspaper’s annual Best Of issue.

Here I was, less than six months later, asking him to once again pose shirtless for a pinup calendar we were making for our coworker Rhys, who he barely knows.

I’ll admit we were running out of tattooed men. We’d already used tattooed women, and we were starting to scratch our heads for tattooed people Rhys might know. Then we realized that Rhys sees Damian almost every day, since Damian is (or actually was) a barista at BlackHorse, where the New Times editorial crew gets its coffee most days. What’s more, Damian was actually the person who told Colin and I about Jillian Wefald, the tattoo artist who eventually did work on our arms, and the artist who eventually tattooed Ryan. So Damian would be the fourth model featuring Jillian’s work in the calendar.

I sheepishly messaged Damian explaining the project and asking him to participate, and he readily agreed. We’d decided that we wanted to play up his profession as a barista, featuring him shirtless blowing steam from the espresso machine onto his chest. It was by far the most graphic of our concepts, and I’d like to think that was because we were becoming bolder as the photo shoots progressed, though it might also have been because Damian, frankly, looks more like a model than the rest of us.

Damian was reluctant to schedule the shoot where he worked so I posted on Facebook that I was looking for a café or someone with an espresso machine willing to let us use it for a photo shoot. My friend Estelle Steynberg said we could use the Steynberg Gallery—an art gallery and café just a mile or so from the office where I work. We scheduled it within just a few days and before we all knew it we were at the café photographing Damian without his shirt.

It was the end of the day and the baristas were trying to sweep and mop and organize their workspace. I felt sort of bad that we were potentially delaying them, but it was also really funny because they responded so practically to the situation. “Well, there’s this shirtless guy blowing steam on his chest; I guess I’ll just sweep around him.”

Plus, I love the reaction this photo gets. Inevitably, the viewer gasps and then sort of chuckles. It’s unexpected. Exactly like the calendar itself.

The tattooed men in Rhys’ life: July

PHOTO BY COLIN RIGLEY

July: Reid Cain, musician, soccer player, comic book shop proprietor, husband, unicorn in the mist

Reid Cain was the biggest surprise to me of all of our shoots. He has a reputation for being somewhat gruff. In fact, a coworker once told me he was afraid of Reid because he never knew what he was thinking. And yeah, there’s a good chance that at some point in your acquaintance Reid will call you a “nerd” despite the fact that he runs a comic book shop. Throw in the fact that I’m pretty sure his wife—New Times Flavor columnist Hayley Thomas—agreed to the shoot on his behalf, and I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

On the plus side, Reid has at least a dozen tattoos. He’s got them across his chest, up and down both arms, as well as at least three on his left leg. This was helpful because it meant we wouldn’t have to pose him awkwardly in order to ensure that his tattoo made it into the photo (as we had to do for several other shoots, including mine).

We got the concept for Reid’s shoot while working on Jenny’s photo. She mentioned the idea of sexy lifeguards and we were instantly delighted with the idea of Reid posing as a sexy lifeguard.

We met Reid and Hayley in Avila Beach one very hot August afternoon when the beach was very crowded, and all I remember from the experience is chatting with Hayley and turning to find Reid leaping majestically through the air, arms outstretched like a mad dancer, kicking ocean spray off his heels. The props were minimal; Reid wore sunglasses and swim trunks. The direction was minimal; I don’t remember offering a single suggestion, and Colin later said he was just trying to keep up with the madman leaping and prancing in the surf.

Hayley seemed completely unsurprised by it all. They’ve done photo shoots together; they’re in a band and, to a certain extent, qualify as local celebrities. So she was probably the only person on the beach that day who wasn’t startled by her husband’s balletic performance.

But the rest of us were in awe, and when we brought the photos back to the New Times office to show our collaborators what had happened that day on the beach, they too felt the magic.

The tattooed men in Rhys’ life: June

PHOTO BY COLIN RIGLEY

June: Hayley Cain, musician, New Times food and drink columnist, freelance writer, wife, rockstar

From the very beginning we wanted to do a shoot depicting a model cooking in the bathroom. Why? The answer to that question is another Rhys story.

Rhys lives in a small apartment and insists that he doesn’t have much counter space in the kitchen. So, like any creative and determined young man, he decided to start cooking in his bathroom. This has prompted an endless stream of speculation, jokes, and requests for him to let us film him for a Youtube cooking show called “A la commode.” But he won’t crack. He continues to insist that it’s the most reasonable course of action and, given that I haven’t seen his apartment, maybe it is.

So we decided to honor Rhys’ bizarre cooking habits in his birthday calendar. And the choice of model was only too obvious: Hayley Cain (pen name Hayley Thomas) who writes the newspaper’s food and drink column.

It didn’t hurt that Hayley is pretty much a walking, talking pin-up model in everyday life. She’s got the retro, feminine dresses; bright hair, always elegantly coiffed; and photo shoot-ready makeup. No assembly required. Well, there’s probably some assembly on her part each morning, but that wouldn’t require any work on our parts to get her ready for the shoot.

Hayley volunteered her own house for the shoot since the rest of us mostly lived in crappy apartments where the bathroom is far too small for two people, let alone camera equipment. Hayley had two viable bathrooms and we actually wound up shooting in both. The larger option where we were hoping to shoot was occupied so we crowded into the smaller bathroom with Colin squished into the shower with his camera. It was actually a little pervy, if you think about it, but the shots were working so we kept going on. I didn’t fit inside the bathroom so I waited outside with one of Hayley’s dogs who whimpered with concern every time she closed the bathroom door.

I’d brought the mixing bowl I inherited from my grandma, along with a mixing spoon and some frosting, and Hayley pretended she was mixing batter.

We finished only to discover that the larger bathroom was now available so we decided to do the shoot all over again in the larger bathroom. This time there was room for me as well, though it was a little tight, and Colin was once again stationed in the shower.

The photos were perfect. We’d even managed to find a fake mustache that seemed to match Hayley’s hair and complexion. And the bathroom was so pristine and beautiful that there’s actually nothing grotesque about the fact that she’s baking in the bathroom. I mean, when I write that it sounds grotesque but the photo leaves you feeling light and happy.

The tattooed men in Rhys’ life: May

May: Glen Starkey, husband, stepfather, other senior staff writer at New Times, English lecturer at Cal Poly

The concept for Glen’s shoot was a no-brainer: We’d photograph him making classic pin-up poses and facial expressions in the hot tub at the Elks lodge. Glen lives at the Elks Lodge. Actually, he’s the only New Times writer who owns his own house, and he spends a fair amount of time at the paper and at Cal Poly where he teaches introductory English classes. But the Elks Lodge accounts for a fair amount of Glen’s leisure time and he’s become somewhat infamous for recruiting New Times employees who flock at the notion of free drinks and a hot tub.

We began the shoot with a couple quick drinks at the bar—a few shots and a few beers each for Colin and Glen to get them warmed up. Then we retired to the hot tub—which had a sign about not bringing drinks into the hot tub, but we were born to be rebels and rule breakers, so we did anyway—where Glen pretty much set a new standard for posing and self-confidence.

Pretty early on in my career at New Times, while working as art director for a photo shoot featuring nine gorgeous local dancers, I had an epiphany. The success of a photo shoot doesn’t have anything to do with how pretty you are. It’s true that models tend to be exceedingly beautiful, but being exceedingly beautiful doesn’t guarantee a good shot. It’s all about confidence and personality, and Glen had plenty to spare in his shoot so that we got what we needed in the first five minutes and everything after that was just gravy. We actually had to turn our four favorites over to the Facebook group to help us choose the best one. And Glen talked Colin and I into joining the Elks that night in the hot tub, so it was a productive afternoon and evening for us all.

The tattooed men in Rhys’ life: April

April: Giselle Griffin, executive assistant & Lana, dog

Giselle still feels really new at New Times. She’s never played hide and seek with the lights off or helped stage a videogame-themed street fight in the parking lot of the local bar. It sounds odd, perhaps, but these are the memories that become the foundation of relationships at the paper—at least most of the editorial relationships.

So I felt a little creepy asking Giselle if she’d be willing to pose in a pinup calendar for our coworker. We were really careful to try to avoid taking a “sexy” photo with the female models, and I was a little worried that Giselle looks too much like a model for a silly pinup shoot to work.

We decided to pursue the cheesiest theme we could think of—Giselle dressed in overalls fishing with her dog Lana in Laguna Lake (part of the joke sadly being that Laguna Lake doesn’t really have any water left and most of the fish have already died).

Giselle met Colin and I out at the dock. We’d borrowed fishing equipment from our coworker Jessica who either stole or borrowed it from her dad. It was our first photo shoot featuring a dog and I think Lana did a great job dissolving the awkwardness of the shoot.

Because Giselle’s tattoo is a small peace symbol on her ankle, we had our work cut out for us making sure the tattoo was visible without losing the rest of the model. Colin rotated around the dock, shooting from a couple different angles, while Giselle occasionally encouraged Lana to sit down and cooperate. It all probably seemed really weird to Lana—and to anyone at Laguna Lake who happened to be watching—but we were mostly really happy when it was done because that meant there were just two more shots: the final month and the cover.

The tattooed men in Rhys’ life: March

PHOTO BY COLIN RIGLEY

March: Ken Samuels, vinyl collector, pancake expert, husband of former New Times arts editor Erin Messer

Rhys doesn’t have many people in the office who are willing to indulge his fondness for babbling about sports. We’re just not a very sporty office, which should be immediately apparent to anyone who knows us. Colin frequently rants against sports fans who use the term “we” when talking about their team of choice; “Oh, did you get your ass off the couch and score a touchdown?” Colin will ask. And he’ll deliberately confuse his sports terminology so that if someone’s talking about football, Colin will ask whether the bases were loaded or how many people struck out. It’s childish, but it’s a good method of discouraging sports talk in the office.

But there was one person willing to talk sports with Rhys: former arts editor Erin Messer’s husband, Ken. Fortunately, Ken also happens to be sporting a half-dozen tattoos based on characters and illustrations from children’s books. So, it was pretty obvious that Ken would be the best candidate for a sporty pin-up photo shoot.

A very long time ago the office decided it would be fun to play basketball together on Saturday mornings in Emerson Park in San Luis Obispo. After a great deal of arguing over how early was too early—there was a camp that held that anything before 1 p.m. was obscene on a Saturday—we did manage to schedule a couple games before the effort just sort of petered out and we all went back to sleeping in really late. Rhys quickly took on the role of coach, which none of the rest of us encouraged or wanted, but he just couldn’t help himself so he gave shooting advice and the rest of us kept performing poorly and mostly ignored his advice. The best part was that we’d sometimes get writers straggling in an hour after we’d started, beer can in hand, smoking a cigarette—which I, as office mom, feel compelled to discourage. So, as you can see, it was a pastime that we all took very seriously.

We decided, in honor of our few brief and embarrassing games at Emerson Park, to do Ken’s pin-up shoot there. Coming up with poses for this particular concept was easy—Ken, spinning the basketball on his finger; Ken splayed out on the basketball court with the basketball; tossing the basketball with a seductive leg kick.

And luckily Erin was there as well to help as art director. It’s difficult for Colin to provide helpful advice for the model, who might not realize they’re scrunching up their face every time they leap into the air or that their raised arm is blocking the view of their tattoo. Having a second set of eyes is essential to getting a good shot. The photographer could, theoretically, just shoot hundreds of options and hope one of them works out. And I do recommend shooting hundreds of options either way, but having an art director to look critically at the model’s poses and clothing during the actual shoot can dramatically increase the quality of the photos overall. And we had two extra pairs of eyes that day, which was especially nice because Colin usually has me stationed near the model with a giant reflector that blocks my view of what’s happening.

When I look at the final shot we chose on that day, I can’t help but think that there’s something so characteristically San Luis Obispo about it. Maybe it’s the palm trees or intense blue sky, or the fact that I know there are enormous Victorian houses worth millions of dollars in the background. Or maybe it’s just reflective of MY San Luis Obispo—a city where adults play basketball on lazy Saturday afternoons, an adult playground essentially.

The tattooed men in Rhys’ life: February

PHOTO BY COLIN RIGLEY

February: Ashley Schwellenbach, New Times managing editor, fiction author, blogger, crazy cat lady

My shoot was something of a disaster (as I knew it would be). I have to emphasize that I am not a model. I derive no pleasure from it. It makes me nervous, self-conscious, and fills me with dread. And if we’d had enough tattooed and properly male models, I would have been spared the indignity of having to participate in a photo shoot from the wrong end of the camera.

If Rhys were asked to describe his notion of heaven to you, I suspect he would tell you about Costco. Rhys loves Coscto. We sometimes joke that Costco pays him to market their brand; that’s how much he talks about Costco. In fact, he keeps a running tally of the number of toilet paper rolls he has in his house; when he first told us about the tally, the number was 56 and I have no idea what that number is now.

Rather than try to get corporate permission for a noncommercial photo shoot, we figured we’d just hang around until the store closed on Sunday and do the shoot when all the employees cleared out. We arrived at Costco around 7 p.m., an hour after the store had closed for the day, expecting the employees to be finishing up. Instead, we were met with the hour-long shopping cart round-up which should have been funny but instead felt torturous because we were rapidly losing the light.

The dayshift employees left but before we could leap out of the car and begin shooting the janitorial crew began to arrive. We waited an hour. An hour and a half. Finally, we decided to just get out of the damn car and begin shooting. I was wearing high-waisted shorts, one of the few high-heeled shoes I own, my Ruth Bader Ginsburg shirt, and a black beard I borrowed from a coworker with an Abraham Lincoln fetish. We had dozens of rolls of toilet paper, which we tossed into the parking lot, and I hastily began posing on the toilet paper with a single roll on my finger flapping in the breeze.

It was cold and very dark and I really was doing my best to work with the conditions we were given, but the reality was that the photos we were taking just weren’t as good as the others. I wonder what would have happened if we’d been shooting in broad daylight, or if we’d gotten closer to the Costco sign. But we weren’t shooting in daylight and neither Colin nor myself was in the best of moods at that point.

We went home and I was pretty bummed about the fact that my photos were the weakest of the bunch. Colin decided that we should come up with a different concept, something playing off my reputation as a crazy cat lady. So, despite the fact that I was still bummed about our Costco parking lot misadventure, we bought two bouquets of flowers, I threw on my cat shirt, and Colin locked the cats in the bedroom with me.

I wound up spending the majority of the shoot biting a rose stem that tasted terrible and petting Jack to keep him in my lap. (Not that I needed to make any effort on his account. Where there is a lap, Jack will be there. Where there is a human trying to read or watch a show on their computer, Jack will be there.) Cat Cat wanted no part of the shoot and can be spotted prowling around the background of the photos–which made it easier to choose which photo we would use since we really wanted both cats in the photo. In fact, looking back at the photos I regret that we couldn’t have borrowed some cats from friends and featured a dozen cats in the photo instead of a piddly two. But they look pretty cute and I’m glad I didn’t have to model alone.

As for how I felt handing Rhys a calendar with a “pinup” photo of myself, well, I’ve done more embarrassing things for the sake of art, a gift, or a prank, and though I’m really not sure whether the calendar qualifies as any or all of those things, it was worth it to see the look on Rhys’ face when he first saw the calendar.