Octavio “Winkytiki” is one crazy fucker who knows how to make women look delicious. We felt it was best to let the exotic pin-up photographer and Vivid Alt auteur tell his own back story. Here it is…

• I have no formal photographic training. Many times I wish I did, somehow I get by - though I’ve lifted my share of sandbags and moved lots of furniture and cleaned a few toilets instead of lugging around textbooks… yup, blood, sweat and tears.
• I love girls! < > and I love taking photos of them.
• I still use film and a trusty Nikon F for the most part… Why? …Coz I care. This brick with a lens was good enough for the boys in ‘Nam, therefore It’s good enough for me.
• When I’m not taking photos, I’m either at the strip club or at a rock n’ roll bar.
• I drive a truck…made in America.
• I survive on meat, whiskey and coffee.
• I like my music loud and fast.
• I prefer VHS.

and last but not least…

• “it ain’t art, just entertainment!”

You’ve been quoted as saying that a lap dance kick started your career as a photographer. Can you explain?

You’d be amazed at the healing powers of lap dances! If it were up to me I’d put them in the same category as meditation and yoga. They just bring out sooo much out of you - especially your wallet. Anyways, yeah, I started making photos in an attempt to score a free lap dance. I was trying to convince a dancer that I was some hot shot shooter and that I was looking for models and all that sorta crap that seems to work for everyone else but me. And, a lap dance would put her in front of the line. Of course that didn’t work, and guys, it never has. Never will. In a desperate attempt to prove the validity of my claim, I told her my website would be up in a couple of weeks, in which time I’ll return to claim my dance. Next thing you know I’m dusting off the ole Nikon and harassing all my girlfriends to pose for a few shots. Fast forward three weeks and I have a little webpage up with some shots of girls in vintage clothes, but of course I never saw her after that, and with a tear in my eye. Never got my dance. Technically that kick started my career. Although, alcohol, stupidity and hormones did have a lot to do with it.

So then, it’s a fallacy that being a photographer helps you get laid?

I’d say it hampers it. In this line of work, you really got no game - even though my work involves photographing girls and creating these idealized photographic renditions of female beauty and glamour and blah blah. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m hanging out all day in the garden of pleasures surrounded by graceful muses in the warm embrace of artistic free love. Yeah right, trust me… it ain’t like that. I guess it’s cool and fun for the first ten minutes. After that, it’s a job. I can be on set with ten centerfolds, and by the end of the day you just want them to go away. There’s just so much bitching and whining and complaining one can handle before hitting happy hour. Trust me, it’s all smoke and mirrors, I tend to be somewhat blunt or straight to the point in my dealings with the opposite sex… and sometimes that’s not really a good thing.

What attracted you to shoot pin ups?

I started shooting “pinupy” looking girls coz being in the whole rockabilly scene here in LA, those were all the girls I knew. I really didn’t choose that as a genre or style to pursue specifically. It was convenient since most of the girls I hang out with had that look. If I’d been at a farm when I started photography, I’d be shootin’ cows.

Do you have a muse or favorite model to work with and why?

I don’t have a muse in particular. Sometimes you hit it off really well with a model, where every photo shot that day is just pure magic. Everything falls in the right place and the images come out gorgeous. Then at the end of the day, we wrap and move on to the next job.

In your opinion, why are Americans so guarded when it comes to sexuality?

Somewhere along the way we got convinced as a budding nation that sexuality is an obstacle in the pursuit of the American Dream. And, therefore cannot coexist - at least in the open. Even the slightest hint of sexuality is to be avoided if a company, institution or individual wants to lure in investors, advertisers and potential business. It will bring your property value down. It will destroy your career and marriage. Sexuality will turn your daughter into a whore… Wait, a whore with bad credit, and your son will be a sex deviant and will never get that corporate job and retirement fund (unless nobody finds out about his kinky fetishes). And all I got to say, is keep it going guys coz that’s what’s keeping us in business.

Vivid-Alt is definitely changing the game and bringing style to adult entertainment. Describe your experience as a Vivid-Alt director.

I guess it’s kinda as close to knowing what it’s like to grow up having “Kennedy” as a last name.

Taste it:
www.winkytiki.com
www.vividalt.com