Brenton Parry

The second model

Added 2020-06-17 22:18:38 +0000 UTC

With only two shoots under my belt with the one model, Erik, I met Andy one day down at the beach. As you can see he was in incredible shape and had a body just asking to be photographed. At the time I owned a medium format film camera that I was totally intimidated by but I took it, and my 35mm camera on this shoot. These three shots are from the medium format camera and I love them, even if the focus is a bit off.

Andy was a dancer at the time and had not a hair on his body below his jawline which added to his sculptural look. His smooth skin against the sandstone rocks just worked so well. I was still nervous about asking models to pose in a certain way and definitely still needed to work on my confidence at direction but there were some good shots in this shoot.

Several years later, having barely been used, I ended up selling the medium format camera because it just didn't suit my style of working on a shoot. My models will tell you that I'm constantly moving around to get different angles and perspectives, close ups and distance shots so not having automatic focus or a built in light meter just made it all too hard.

I am still grateful and amazed that my models from the early days agreed to pose for me when I had no experience and no portfolio to show them. This shoot was in 2005, two years before iPhones were unleashed upon the world so I had no way of showing Andy what I had done before and he still took a chance and agreed to model for me.