TiggerLovesYou.Com // A little history...
This section is a little outdated, but I will be updating it shortly...
TLY was the best way I could figure to combine the two things I love more than anything in life, raving and photography. From that first magical night at my first rave with Ash and Meg (Serenity 2, Maritimewhat Hall, SF, - Jan 2000) to the parties I went to this last weekend, raving never gets old for me.
For some people raving is about the music, for some it is about the drugs, but for some people including me its more about the people. Raving in general has taught me that there is good in all people, and that even if sometimes it takes drugs to get it out, for the most part people just want to be accepted and to be loved by other good people.
I started taking pictures in 2001 for TechnoRealm.Net (Pyskoral’s website)…mostly because I had a digital camera and Jim wanted pictures for his site. I ended up taking thousands of pictures over the years even when TechnoRealm finally shut down, and I figured I needed a venue in which to share all those pictures with everyone. The early ideas for TLY were fashioned from the rave picture websites that were popular back in 99-00 in the Bay Area, including Charlie’s RavePictures.Net and David’s RavePic.Com. So TLY just started out as a site for myself to share the pictures I had taken over the years with other ravers. As time went on I started taking pictures at parties and posting them soon after, and more and more people looked forward to getting their pictures up on the site. To be honest in the early days a good amount of the pictures were of the 15-20 friends (mostly girls) that would be around me each night and not of many other people. I then started to watch my good friend Mark (SharkE), who was posting pictures on his SharkWaveProductions.Com website, and what he did different really impressed me. He actually went out of his way to make sure that he took pictures of everyone. Not just the cute girls on the dance floor and the djs but the random people in the corners that would never ever ask you to take their picture, but when you did take their picture it made their whole night. Seeing that I realized that people really love being noticed, and they love good pictures of themselves.
In my 6+ years of raving there were many different things that touched on the therioes that helped build TLY, including:
The Sexy Bitch Crew - Founded by Liz, Scott and Sam...
Team Tigger - The brainchild of Dana and Gillian one cold night in the Berekley Hills...
The Tigger Sluts - Only the best and most beautiful.
The Sluts Extraordinare - Xmas and her great ideas.
So we come to today…
My goals for TLY are as follows: I want to capture pictures of people at parties and not only make them feel loved but also help them with memories down the line. I also want to portray our fragile rave scene in a good light, because so many times in the media and other outlets it has a negative shadow cast upon it. I strive not only to take a large amount of pictures, but to have different and memorible pictures that will mean something to someone years from now.
I guess if I go to a party on any given night, and there is just one raver that has a better night because I took their picture, or they have a better Sunday when they see the pictures online, then my mission is achieved.
Someday we will all look back on this time in our lives and realize that we were part of something very special. Like people who grew up in the 60's and who got to be on the doorstep of history, one day we will think back fondly on these days. Only then will we completely realize how amazing this whole thing was.
I love you all.
-Tigger
Special thanks to Rainbow Brite, Ebyz, Nate, BJ and the Twins. Without you none of this would have been possible. Thanks for putting up with me.