Brandon Ruckdashel - Actor / Photographer / Filmmaker

Me at my desk in Manhattan. It's about to rain.

Intro

Hey everyone! I am coming up on my 1 month anniversary of being on Steemit and I wanted to take advantage of everything I know now to do a really great intro. Plus, I have a bunch of new people following me and I want to give them a chance to learn about who I am and why I am here on Steemit.

Who Am I?

I'm Brandon Ruckdashel. I live in New York and Los Angeles working as an actor, photographer, and filmmaker. I come from suburban Minnesota and spent most of my teenage years moving from one state to another. I am also a former christian. I spent much of my youth very involved in the church and as an adult do not push my atheist beliefs on other people. I think faith is personal and as such will not be making posts about it.

Me in Yoshkar-Ola, Russia on a missionary trip when I was 16

I also lived in Utah and Virginia before going to college in North Carolina.

After college at East Carolina University, studying musical theater, I moved to New York and worked for a year selling Hungarian wine. Yes! I love Bikaver (Bull's Blood) and my other favorite Hungarian varietal is Kékfrankos. On the white side I am a sucker for a good Grüner Veltliner.

Me and Charlotte d'Amboise

Actor?

Yes, I did exactly what every parent fears and I became an actor. I am a member of Actors Equity Association and got my card doing an off-Broadway show called Ascension.

Courtesy of the NY Times

I gotta admit I was quite pumped up when they compared me to two of my idols Brad Pitt and James Dean.

Me with Michelle Maylene. Publicity Still Co-Ed Confidential.

I went on from there to star in an HBO/Cinemax late night show called Co-Ed Confidential. I had a load of fun working with my co-stars and I've already done two posts about some of those memories. Post 1 Post 2. I Hope you spin by and check them out. They are both NSFW and contain some fun pictures of me and the girls.

Photographer

When I moved to New York I wanted to model like any other actor and I had a lot of people telling me I could make it. I tried really hard and shot with a number of photographers my first year out of school.

photo credit Bryant Criminger (Myrtle Beach, SC)

I was on one particular shoot in New York and the photographer, Ken Jones, turned to me and said "I gotta be honest with you. You're too short and too skinny. You're never going to model. Take my camera and go take a picture of that other model."

And I did.

model J-Dia

Before I knew it I was shooting for agencies and had met my first muse Rachel (more on her at a later time).

model Rachel Michelle. Osaka, Japan

I love photography. I shoot with a Canon 5D mark II and have various lenses I have used over the years. My current camera is my fourth camera body. My first camera was the Kodak/Canon 1n and that was followed by a 10D and a 5D. One day I dream of having enough money to change my entire setup over to Leica.

I have one of those big white lenses and occasionally it helps me get into concerts and private appearances other celebrities are doing.

Rufus Wainright at a private CD release party in New York.

Filmmaker?

With both acting and photography under my belt I decided it was time to start making movies. With one of my old pals Keith Collins (who is the king of the party boys in New York) I made a no budget horror movie called Gravedigger.

Bumblefoot from Guns 'n Roses with director Doug Bollinger

It was one of those movies which had a lot of heart, but some fairly bad acting. My cinematography was not much better. I did all of the post production, which was a monster load of work, but it taught me everything I needed when I made my first feature film as director, "Grinder".

Official trailer for Grinder. subtitles in spanish.

Grinder is still on the festival circuit and has played at the Twin Cities Film Festival, qFlix Philadelphia, AltFest, and Kashish Mumbai int'l Film Festival. We will be playing in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico in November.

I was given a "First Time Director Award" at qFlix.

My plans for Steemit.

I love this site and I love you guys! The energy is amazing and thanks to our ability to curate the posts people generally stay away from Facebook style flame outs.

I plan on writing articles about everything from my experiences shooting movies and TV to my love of cooking and my new muses. I have so much going on inside my head sometimes I need someone to prompt me. If something I write gets you interested and you want to hear more, please let me know.

(btw I'm terrible with commas so if someone could help me out with that it would be awesome)

If you liked this post check out some of my others:

1. My Introduceyourself where I talk about my life in New York as an Actor, Photographer, and Filmmaker
2. My first cooking blog about making a Whole Roast Chicken with Stuffing with pictures!
3. Or my first NSFW post following the story about how I ended up doing Late Night softcore movies - Part 1
4. Part 2 of how I got into Late Night movies

Unless otherwise noted all photos used are the work of Brandon Ruckdashel or official publicity material released by the projects I have been in.