Hot, wet, and….cuntry.

I don’t know why, but as I left the apartment to go to the Titties & Queers show at Club Sway a couple weeks ago, I grabbed an extra camera lens and stuffed it in my purse.

I never do that. I have shot my Drag photos with one lens only, for years.

I choose this one lens – a Fuji 56mm f/1.2 for you camera nerds out there – because it sees the scene as naturally as the human eye – in other words, the lens isn’t curved to move the subject closer, or to widen the scene, beyond what I can see with my own eye.

This choice is intentional – I want you to see performers as I see them.

I don’t want viewers distracted by the backgrounds of the club scene (for the most part).

Well, when I started shooting the show, my primary lens froze up. It would not focus, and I missed the first performances in the show by Stormey and Tatum trying to get it to work.

I ultimately gave up, and switched out the lens to the backup I had serendipitously stuffed in my purse on the way out the door.

This is a different lens, though – it is a “wide angle” lens (a Fuji 35mm f1.2), meaning that the glass in the lens is curved to enable me to see more of the scene in front of me.

The problem is, as the glass curves, so does everything in the scene.

People’s bodies can be stretched and bent in weird ways by shooting them from a certain perspective; so shooting a live performance event with a wide-angle lens makes me feel…limited.

And because it is a wide angle lens, I have to pay more attention to the scene around the performers, at the risk of cluttering the background with too many or too few people, or too much or the wrong color light.

So I changed my approach, and gave up trying to photograph performers: for the first time in a very long time I tried to photograph the performANCE.

You tell me – how did I do?

This was a vibrant show with a strong sapphic audience.

I always appreciate a Titties & Queers show because I can be in the crowd as a trans woman (dressed as you see at the end of the photo carousel) and I do not feel gawked or stared at; I am not slapped or harassed or touched without my consent. It’s one of the few places where I feel free of the “male gaze.”

And the performances – centering on the theme “Hoe Down” – served some hot, wet, country cunt to an audience hungry for lesbians and non-men on the stage.

Ruby LaRue stood out with her dynamism and energy. The Tasmanian Devil of Burlesque, as she has been called right now by me. I am glad I had the wider lens, as it allowed me to engage with more of that movement and really make viewers FEEL the movement of the performer. I think I succeeded in doing that here.

. o O {Maybe this is how I need to photograph Aubi Gold – she is so fast I struggle to keep up with her.}

And then there were Gage’s nails. And that scarlet red in Gage’s outfit? The photos of their performance say everything about the cvnt they served.

My favorite photo of Moss Arati is marked in the gallery below, because I think it shows how she enters every performance: big and sweeping and bold.

Also, a couple favorite shots of Stormey – one where she is in the crowd, watching on as Tatum Totts performs, and another overhead shot following the carefree movement of Stormey twirling.

Because of the afore-mentioned camera problems, I had only one performance by Tatum to make the shot that I wanted to make that night.

I wanted to capture the idea that a performance by Tatum Totts is just magical, and I was able to use the wider angle lens to really capture a sense that Tatum is casting a spell while performing.

And last – but never the least – Arraya Sunshine. I like how she mixes macabre and camp together in every performance: to me, anyway, each of her performances pulls something powerful off a pedestal, suggesting that we can deal with hard stuff through camp and laughter.

Skyler’s line dancing class at the intermission was an absolute hoot. Skyler has such a gift for dancing, and teaches it in such a funny and entertaining and joyful way. It was so good to see Skyler up on stage again.

Were you at the show?

Share your stories and experiences in the comments below.