Aussielicious

Last week I posted my wish list of celebrities that I would LOVE to photograph. While I was writing that post I had a nagging feeling that there was someone else but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember who it was. Unlike the other celebrities on that list, I know exactly how I want to photograph Matthew. I don’t know who would fund the shoot because there would be a bit of set building, but by god it would be a good shoot.

I hope that Matthew is having a great perparation for the Olympics in London later this year. He seems like such a nice guy.

The perks of having a new computer are constant joys and reminders of why you upgraded from the old one that didn’t have enough life in it to do things you wanted to do.

One of those things was to put books together, mainly for myself rather than a traditional album, to display my photos from the trip to Burning Man and New York. I didn’t take many photos in Vegas as I had trouble settling in to that city. I’ve just uploaded two books on Blurb. If any of you want to buy them you can, but even if you just want to have a look, you can do that too.

Burning Man by Brenton Parry | Make Your Own Book

New York New York by Brenton Parry | Make Your Own Book

Cynthia Nixon has outraged a lot of the gay community by saying she thinks that she personally is gay by choice. I understand why people are pissed off with her because it undermines our argument against the religious right wing saying we can choose to be straight and go to heaven and please god blah blah blah.
In some ways, bare with me here, I do kind of agree with Cynthia. Not to the point where you can actually choose who you are attracted to. God knows if I could choose that I wouldn’t have wasted so many years being attracted to people way out of my league.

I would say that there is a certain amount of choice involved in accepting your own sexuality or denying it. It doesn’t strike me as a very healthy option to deny it and to live a lie, but some people make that choice. I, like millions of others made a choice, consciously or not, to accept that I am attracted to men and to live honestly and happily and guess what? I like that choice. I totally agree with Cynthia’s comments that “For me, it is a choice… you don’t get to define my gayness for me.” It’s another case of the LGBT world being very judgemental of each other when we really should be standing together.

Maybe Cynthia’s choice is to use the word Gay to describe herself instead of Bisexual. She’s been married to a man, has children with her ex husband and now has a child with her fiance. Who knows? She’s certainly opened up a can of worms with her statements.

Well, every year before Mardi Gras the rumours swirl about what stars will grace the stage to perform. George Michael did precisely half a song two years ago. Every year the word on the street from someone who knows someone who knows someone who has the inside word is that Madonna/Kylie/Janet etc etc are performing. Mardi Gras have started announcing who some of the performers are, partly to drive ticket sales and partly to stop the rumours I’d say. This one has me wetting myself with joy. Now I have to be a party boy, and they save the big act for closing usually.

I treated myself to a new iMac on the weekend and now that I have a computer that isn’t in a coma and has a little power, I finally got around to editing my footage from Burning Man. It was such an amazing time but so hard to communicate in words the feelings I have about it. The craziness of the night time with flashing lights and music everywhere, contrasting with the days which were still crazy but a bit more subdued and the colour was washed out by the blazing sun and the beige of the desert dust.

I’ve been losing sleep lately worrying about getting all the shots done for my exhibition in time to get them printed and framed ready for the June exhibition. I’ve approached a few guys I know (barely) through friends on facebook and one of them after lots of vague silences and unsuredness said he would model for me. He’s a beautiful guy but had been warned about people asking him to pose nude, understandably. I’ve given up on him as he just doesn’t bother getting back to me and I have deadlines to get things done.

The solution? For that shoot that I had planned, I’m shooting Matteo once more. Matteo was the gorgeous and very patient man that I covered in talcum powder for my last exhibition. He and his spectacular butt will be (all going to plan) in front of my camera this weekend. Thankfully Matteo isn’t shy at all, as he’ll be getting nude in a place where we may get caught. That’s the trouble with stepping outside the studio. I can’t wait to get another shot or two for the exhibition and working with Matteo again will be fun.

As a photographer that likes and is more comfortable shooting people than landscapes or architecture, it’s only natural that I have dreams and aspirations to photograph celebrities one day. Whether that is for editorial, fashion or purely artistic endeavours, I don’t mind but I’m slowly compiling a wish list.

It’s no surprise to anyone reading this that I would love to shoot Ms Minogue. I have ideas already to go for Kylie, and have done for years. If you are reading this Kylie, please feel free to contact me. Oh who am I kidding. I’ll have to stalk her into submission.

The others on my list so far, as above, are Megan Gale because I think she is absolutely stunning and represents a healthy athletic glamazon woman with exquisite features. I’ve seen her look quite different in a range of shoot and I think she’d be amazing to work with. Didier Cohen, former face of Industrie Clothing and now developing a name for himself in tv and radio. I’m not normally into tattoos but there is something so very sexy about Didier. Ryan Kwanten, the bad boy heart breaker from True Blood, down to earth aussie and by all reports, lovely guy is on the list for all those reasons and because I would just love to shoot him.

This post is a follow up to a recent post about some dodgy nude behaviour on a Perth nudist beach and at a Bali gay resort. The man who told me the story tried to post a comment on the post but it wouldn’t work, so I said I would post it as a post in it’s own right.

I am the person Brenton wrote about who had the Perth incident.

It’s really comforting to read that everyone shares Brenton’s view on the two situations he wrote about. I was actually troubled by the question of whether or not this is becoming the ‘new accepted normality’.

I have questioned whether or not to report it and have decided not to because:

1: I was not penetrated or physically forced into an act I was unable to stop. After a few seconds of delayed shock reaction, I pushed him away and stopped the act. It was a blow job – sure, an extremely unwelcome one – but still, just a blow job.

2: Because in my head it was not a violent or extreme personal violation, I fear reporting it to the police may lead to compromising of the nude beach in Perth. I would hate us to lose it due to police or even media attention over something that in my eyes lies very low on the sexual offences list.

I love going to the nude beach and will continue to do so. I go there because I feel very comfortable with my nudity and do not go there for sexual gratification. I very much enjoy it when polite, decent strangers feel comfortable enough to come over and chat with me naked without any sexual contact. Sure, they may be sussing out if I’d like to do something, but being comfortable enough to come and talk without expecting something is a very cool thing in my book.

Trust me, if the incident was more severe, I’d be reporting it. But I’m old enough and mature enough to write this off in my head as an unpleasant isolated experience that will not cause me long term problems.

If you’re on the nude beach in Perth and you see a skinny white guy listening to his iPod, feel free to come and say hi. I’ll still be going! :)

Another blog reader commented on the facebook feed of this post. “Wow! I must admit I think the same guy has harassed me down at the same beach before. Last I saw of him though some detectives had followed him down to the beach & I haven’t seen him since. Thank God! It’s people like him that give us all a bad name.”

Kylie’s Aphrodite Les Folies tour was one of the most lavish she’s ever done and the male dancers and aerialists were some of the hottest she’s had on a tour, and that’s saying something. Well, they’ve appeared in their skimpies in DNA Magazine now and finally we have a behind the scenes video to share. Yummo.

A long while ago I posted the video for Matt Alber’s single “The end of the world” which was a beautiful song with an equally gorgeous video where Matt made no secret of his sexuality, dancing with the object of his desire.

Matt recently released a new album “Constant Crows” and on that album is Matt’s cover of Madonna’s “Take a bow” which I think is more raw and honest than the original. Matt’s voice is beautiful!

Jessy Ares is a porn star signed with TitanMen and he’s also a singer. Who would have known? When you are a porn star, in San Fran and you are releasing a single called “Pornstar” it’s not that much of a stretch to come up with the concept of public nudity in your video. It just means it probably isn’t getting any airplay apart from online. Is that a criticism? Not in the slightest.

Jessy and two of his co-stars, Hunter Marx and Aymeric Deville wandered through the Castro for the video and it didn’t take them long to be butt naked, which of course is perfectly legal. Love it.

It seems that as a community we often wonder why we have a bad reputation for promiscuous and over the top behaviour. Some of that reputation may well be justified.

A friend was telling me he was at the nude beach in Perth the other day and putting sunscreen on his face, eyes closed, when he felt someone touching him, looked down and a gentleman was sucking him off, right there on the beach, not in the dunes, no eye contact signals, no welcomed approach, just gulped him down. When my friend shoved him off and told him to get lost, the “gentleman” told him it wasn’t his fault my friend was uptight.

Uptight? Seriously? That is downright blatant sexual assault. How on earth is my friend being uptight?

Two other friends, a couple, have just had a holiday in Asia and at one point stayed at a clothing optional gay resort. One night the two of them were in their villa, nude, just chatting and relaxing when in walks the owner of the resort. No knock on the door and no “do you mind if I come in?” He proceeded to stay and make conversation for 45 minutes, my friends too polite and stunned to ask him to leave.

Are we so focused on getting our rocks off that basic courtesy, or even law, doesn’t come into the equation just because opportunity gave a knock? It’s a select few trouble makers, as in any demographic, that earn a bad reputation and undo all the progress we’ve been making.

Tonight we have two more entries in the Favourite Place challenge! Peter is a long time reader and commenter here at Aussielicious, all the way from Amsterdam where he took this beautiful photo.

On the other side of the world comes this colourful streetscape from Bob who took this photo in Paraty, Brazil.

I stumbled across this video today and was absolutely blown away. The man above is a Female-to-Male (FTM) transsexual. This video was posted a year after his surgery, which I’m assuming was to remove breast tissue.

I’ve always been astounded by the bravery of transsexuals to go against society’s conventions and transform to the gender they were meant to be, and for someone to do it so publicly is just beautiful to see.

The other thing that blew me away was the physical transformation. Sure, I have no idea what he looked like as a female but he makes a smoking hot man with a body that is worthy of a DNA cover. His discipline and dedication to his transformation is making me feel very guilty about my diet and training.

Please follow this link to watch the video. It’s inspiring. I wasn’t able to embed it here.

Today while I was at work I was chatting on text and email to a couple of guys I’ve been chatting to online. There was a bit of sex talking involved. Now I’m not the most confident of guys in the bedroom department after one or two guys I’ve been involved with have shattered that confidence so there are things in my fantasy realm that will almost certainly never be lived out.

Yet somehow today I was right in the mood to get down and very dirty with people and tick of things that I don’t think will ever happen. Before you all ask, no I’m not going to go into detail, but they were fun things to think of. The reality is though, if someone hit me up to actually do them, I would crumble into my world of neurosis about it and never have the guts to do it.

So, today I realised that I can be very horny for a hypothetical situation, especially when it’s in no danger of eventuating, but in reality, a lot of the ideas were just that, fantastic ideas that are better there. There were others that will happen… just not today.