Porn Valley- The other week on a Defiance Films shoot, photog Todd Todd was telling me a story about one of his first jobs. He was working in the Dodgers press box as a go-fer and is sent to the Dodger club house for the lineup card or something like that. Not knowing protocols and who to talk to, Todd gets to the club house and is pointed to a door and told just walk in. Tod walks in, and Tom Lasorda’s in his underwear. Lasorda starts cussing Todd up and down. And after a few minutes of a work over, Todd’s finally let in on the fact that his balls are being busting. Todd’s then sent to the Cincinnati clubhouse and pretty much the same thing happens there.

Except now, Todd gets to see Bobbi Blair www.adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=10869 in her underwear- indicative that things have shifted for the better from the time he was journeying for $1,000 a month to learn his craft. Todd’s got about ten years in the industry, after coming in as a struggling photographer student from Santa Monica College. His words.

Todd, a man who brings passion to his profession, began assisting photographer Scott Preston at Preston’s studio.

“I set up lighting, learning different lighting tricks- learning different aspects of the adult industry,” explains Todd. “Scott basically held my hand and walked me through the AVN expo. He got me a job and introduced me to everybody. After two years of assisting him, I broke out and started my own photography career.

“Scott would shoot for Club Magazine, High Society magazine,” Todd continues. “And Scott was shooting a big layout for High Society, and the guys from New York actually flew out here for a couple of days. I was the assistant and by surprise they liked me.” Todd remembers Jezabel Bond being on the set.

“It was her first ever shoot and they were, like, this girl’s so cute, you can’t screw up on a shoot with her. Go shoot a young girl layout on her and we’ll buy it from you. That was my first real opportunity to have a paying gig as a photographer. I did that and did a good job. So they kept hiring me. Then Club saw my work and they started hiring me. It wasn’t so much for layouts as it was on the set pieces, or going to the AVN show, walking around and taking just on camera flash shots. I really worked my way up. There’s a lot of this industry who’ve just stepped into the business and all of a sudden they’re directors. I’ve wiped up the cum and I’ve lifted the heavy lights. I made a $1,000 a month for five years learning my craft. I busted my ass to get where I’m at pretty much.”

While he was on that tangent, I wanted Todd to talk about the fuck-ups in the business. I agree with what he has to say 1000%.

“It seems that the people who are educated about photography- have a college education with cinematography, have a good head on their shoulders, treat people really well and are not doing drugs all night and wake up fucked up in the morning coming into work, those are the people who don’t do well and get pushed back,” Todd believes.

“It seems like the people who are more fucked up and have drug problems or just don’t have a common sense to life, are the ones who really succeed- here’s more money, here’s another project. They come to set. As a photographer you have to sit back and kind of let everything else happen and you take your pictures. And watching how people direct or their lack of directing is frustrating. It’s frustrating to see idiots do well. Very frustrating.”

Todd offers an easy explanation for why he’s working in the adult industry.

“I love beauty- I love beautiful women,” he states. “I love photography and art and figured I could mesh all of that together and be successful.” My impetus for getting into the adult business had been the glamour photography of Peter Gowland. Similarly, Todd’s father always kept Playboys at the house.

“Looking at the photography, the lighting and the beauty of the women was something I was always interested in,” Todd says. “And I always liked photography. It was a hobby.” Todd’s never seemed to obsess on one kind of woman.”I love them all,” he says. “I love a girl with a big ass. I love a girl with a small ass. I like real tits. I love fake tits. There’s not one particular girl that I’ve ever focused on.”

Todd still remembers people telling him that he’d never make any money at it, that there were so many photographers in L.A. Todd was told not to do it. But he did it.

“I had to follow what I love to do,” he says. Even though he’s professionally trained, Todd realized that he had to accommodate some new tricks once he got into the adult market. He also maintains ties in the mainstream world”I shoot for everybody,” Todd continues. “I shoot for TV Guide, NBC, Disney…It’s fun to go in and do soap operas.”

Todd began directing not long ago. The first project he did was for Vertigo. “That was Mad at Daddy 2- I shot that for them,” he says. “They liked it. Then I shot Lean and Teen. Then I just shot a Latin line, Burrit-hos. But shooting that kind of stuff is very frustrating because I don’t do anything half-assed. I put all my love into it. I shoot the boxcover. I shoot the behind the scenes. I shoot everything. And then to hand that to somebody and not know how the editing’s going to turn out, or have them slap a title on the box- they don’t put extra love into it. They’re just slapping them out and it’s hard being excited about that.”

During his tenure in the business, Todd had also put in some time at Jill Kelly Productions. Todd started at JKP because Johnni Darko was their head photographer, and he assisted Darko for awhile.

“Every Wednesday he had to go in and direct,” says Todd. “So he needed someone, that he could trust, to come fill in. He had me do it. After he started directing more and more and more, he left Jill Kelly and I took over his full role there. The time I was there, everybody talked bad about Jill Kelly’s company- they didn’t pay on time, they never paid. They were great to me. It was a family and it was really, really good. The only bad thing was they didn’t let you grow in the company. The didn’t let you become a director. Miles Long should have been a director. I should have been a director. They should have let Jenna Haze, their contract star direct. I think she would have been really good. But they would let the most random idiots with no talent come in and direct. I don’t know why they wouldn’t let the family grow.

“That’s why I love Defiance and Torrid,” says Todd. “They feel that the people that are working for them are family. They really have you in their best interest- not just their product. And you want to work harder for them. For Christmas, JKP never gave us a thing. For your birthday, never a thing. But I’m working for Defiance and Torrid and Vince Voss gives me $300 in gift certificates for different restaurants and that just makes you want to come to work and work hard for that little appreciation. And they never gave you that at Jill Kelly.”

As far as he’s concerned, Defiance/Torrid are number one in his book, says Todd. “If they call, they’re first. They’re always first and they’re number one.” Todd met Defiance contract girl Bobbi Blair on a JKP set, actually.

“She came on set the first time and I had been very single for about five years,” says Todd. “Everybody was kind of talking about me in the industry- he’ll fuck all the girls and he’ll date all the girls but he won’t really have a girlfriend. It’s just that I love all these women. I love them as friends. I respect what they do. But I can’t date a girl and watch her come home with having nut all over her face. That’s not me. I met Bobbi on set- and I don’t want kids. The first thing I always ask girls is do you want kids. As soon as she says, yes, I want a kid, okay, there’s no relationship possibilities. And “Bobbi came on set. She was beautiful. She was sweet. She had a great head on her shoulders and she’s like I don’t want kids. I love this and everything she loved are things I loved. Everything she said she hated are things that I hated. But then she left. I said goodbye. She had a boyfriend. About six months later she came back on set again and we just sat there and talked for four or five hours. We decided to date one day. She came over and now we’re engaged.”

Todd and Balir have picked either Bora Bora or Tahiti to get married.

“We’re going to be married in a beautiful place together,” says Todd. “And when we come back we’re going to have a party for all the family.” I tell Todd I feel a production company coming on. He says Blair is an amazing editor.

“Not only does she have beauty, she has brains,” he continues. “She’s the first person I’ve ever met who really, really has their head on straight. She was raised right and she’s very artistic and is pretty much a computer geek. So with her editing skills and boxcover skills, and now she’s a DVD author- she’s doing that; and I can shoot everything, direct it and give it to her to make up. She’s the MTV generation. She’s a little bit younger than I am. She has the freshness, that youngness, knowing the different music styles. She’s really hip on music videos and wants to incorporate that freshness into porn. I think it will be exciting when she’s ready. I think we’ll do very well.”

Because he embraces beauty, Todd says he has problems grasping the mundane concepts of double anal.

“I think that’s something I never need to see in my life,” he says. “But if it’s something other people want to see and I can make money off of it, I need to learn that. I’ve always liked Andrew Blake stuff. I’ve always liked Michael Ninn. It’s very beautiful and very sexy. But now that I’m into porn and I watch it, it’s not a turn on. It’s not something you want to jack off to. It’s something you want to watch and look at the beauty of a woman- which I like. The nastiness is something that Vince Voss is teaching me. He’s teaching me the nasty side of it. As far as this business, where else am I going to live like a rock star? I walk into a dance club and there’s 30 beautiful porn stars all screaming my name, hey, come have a drink with us! It’s exciting. It’s a lifestyle I never thought I’d live and the money is good. I’d say 90% of the people are really good. Of course there are the 10% that are assholes and idiots. But most of the people are really good.”

His comments give indication that Todd’s got no urge to change his life in any way.

“There are a few people I wouldn’t have dated, maybe,” he laughs. “I would have made smarter decisions in that area. Overall, I’m with the most perfect person in the world, now. She’s beautiful. She’s smart. She knows how to handle me. She doesn’t mind that I shoot naked women all day. She knows that I’m here doing a job and that doesn’t bother her in the least.”

Realizing that he might just have the best job in the world, Todd says he’ll wake up in the morning going, “Fuck, I don’t want to go to work. Then you stop and you think- I’m going to set. I’m going to be in a beautiful mansion. I’m going to have lunch catered to me. I’m going to be around some of the most beautiful women in the world and they’re going to be naked. And when I tell them to take off their clothes, they’re going to take them off without questioning me. And I get to take their pictures. And I get paid great money! I hate working. But if I have to have a job, this is the one.”

Todd remembers a birthday party that was thrown for him last year. “It’s the national day for smoking marijuana- 4/20,” Todd explains. “They had a big 4/20 party for me but they forgot to tell me about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go; it wasn’t that I didn’t show up. It was I didn’t even know about it and the next day I got a phone call saying I was on www.lukeford.com – look at Todd Todd. He doesn’t go to his own party. And people were actually impressed by that. Everybody was more, hey, you’re a rock star. You don’t even show up to your own party. But I didn’t know about it. I was actually at home on my birthday by myself. I didn’t know anything was going on.”

Todd and Blair have limited down time. “Our time off is so limited that when we do have days off together, I really take advantage of it,” he says.

“This last year we’ve done everything. Fishing is our new thing. We go fishing all the time. Bobbi has led a very sheltered life, Her father and mother are very good parents and really know how boys are and kept their daughter locked up for the fear of what boys would do to her. In the mean time, she never got to experience much of the fun things in life which is fun for me because I got to take her to her first Dodger game this year. We went fishing for the first time. We went to Hawaii.

“I took her to shoot a handgun- you should have seen how excited she was. She was sitting back there blasting away at the target. It’s home defense. I have a gun in my house. I have it under the bed. If she’s home alone and I’m not home- how bad would I feel if someone came in and she didn’t know how to use that gun.

“We’ve been to the L.A. Zoo- every day we have off, we do something fun. You have to keep life fresh and interesting.”

One thing Todd and Blair won’t do, is exchange industry shop talk.

“I don’t even go home and take pictures of her,” muses Todd. “When I’m at home I put the camera down. I don’t want to see it. We don’t talk about work. It’s just us. It’s nothing about porn.”