Sometimes singers want to act. Actors want to direct. Ex-presidents want to spend their retirement painting pets and foreign leaders just because. Since these guys never think twice about unloading their artistic vision on you, here’s the first of what we hope becomes a regular report card summing up the relative merits and offenses of their latest side projects.

First up: a real live Walking Dead dude’s photography.

Name: Norman Reedus.

Aka: The crossbow-and-goatee Southern gentleman on The Walking Dead.

Side Project: Photography and film. He’s even got his first big solo gallery debut coming to LA in November, which includes work from his book, The Sun’s Coming Up... Like a Big Bald Head.

Content: The Reedus photography oeuvre we’ve seen thus far embraces the dark side. Bloody coworkers, abstract shadows in far-away lands, blurry children and unnerving figures. Not completely unexpected from someone whose workday is spent among the partially consumed.

Execution: Norman demonstrates a fine eye for capturing amusing moments. Like when he snaps a topless woman wearing a werewolf mask about to destroy a stack of pancakes. Or the zombie extras he has flipping the bird en masse at his camera. Then there is creepier, Nine Inch Nails video kind of stuff, like the black-and-white shot showing a lone hand dangling through bars in a decrepit brick wall.

Getting Along with Others: In a press release, Kim Gordon says, “Norman knows how to use the flat surface. He imbues it with the physicality that he knows as an actor, the spatial sense when you’re moving around in that rectangle.” And she went to art school, so... yeah.

Final Evaluation: Overall, Reedus’s photos are fresh, even when dealing with more frigging zombies. (Please with the zombies, everybody.) Anyway, it’s definitely a side project to keep an eye on.

Preliminary Grade: B for effort. Z for zombies.