Aussielicious

Could it be that Zac Efron is trying to shake off the overly groomed and bronzered tween Disney hunk tag? A few weeks ago he accidentally dropped a condom pack on the red carpet and now he’s in Australia and being photographed having a good old rummage around in his underwear on the balcony of his hotel before undoing his trousers, stripping to his undies on the balcony and then dropping those too just inside.

At the end of the series on Dlisted you see that he knows the cameras are there. Am I complaining? Not at all. Zac is growing up nicely thank you very much and I would guess that getting your arse out is one of the easiest ways  to shake up a squeaky clean image in the publicity machine that is Hollywood. It is a shame he didn’t turn around while the undies were down though.

Once again my Easter was spent with my family and another family that I’ve grown up with who I consider family, even though there’s no relation. We stayed in a big old house that while it could do with some serious maintenance and cleaning, served our needs really well. It slept all 18 of us and had a tennis court and semi-indoor pool and it was just us so the kids could run around playing to their hearts content. The adults could run around with the kids or relax as much as they wanted, which is exactly what I did.

As you can see, above, I also played with Instagram quite a lot. If anyone wants to follow me on Instagram my username is “aussiebrenton”.

My ex posted this video on facebook the other day and I eventually got around to looking at it. Dan’s description of this guy as being like a “cool version of Justin Timberlake” is pretty spot on to me. This guy samples his own voice as he sings and loops it to build a really rich full sound as he keeps belting out the song. Love it.

I’m off this afternoon for my traditional easter family trip so there will be a few days break in blogging. Have a great long weekend everyone!

The first entries are in for the “Repetition” challenge. It’s amazing where you can see repetition when you really look for it. It can be a shape repeated over and over in a random pattern or in a graphic precise pattern.
The first image is from Ross. I don’t know exactly what it is of but I love the shine and reflection.

Second we have some Umbrellas taken in Italy by Peter. Doesn’t it just make you think of the beaches in Europe with all the deck chairs lined up?

David from Perth says he nearly fell over backwards trying to get this shot, but it was obviously worth it to get the central building framed so nicely by the other buildings.

Curtis, the winner of the self portrait challenge has sent in this shot of what I believe are airline trolleys used to move things to the plane on the tarmac.

Finally in this first round of photos, Dieter has sent in this photo of La Pedrera, one of the Gaudi designed buildings in Barcelona.

Yesterday, submissions closed for a Senate Inquiry into a Marriage Equality Bill that has been entered in the Australian Senate. I’m proud to say that there were 45,000 submissions of SUPPORT from people of all walks of life in Australia including religious leaders, welfare workers, straight couples and thousands of regular people like you and me. It’s one of the highest number of submissions tendered into a senate inquiry in Australia and this is a very hot topic in Australian politics. Leaders of both our major parties, while opposing reform have also admitted it is inevitable.

This video made a huge impact late last year, helping convince the current ruling party here to change it’s party policy to support marriage equality even though our Prime Minister is against it. It still makes me smile and cry because it represents everything I want. I want to fall in love, introduce someone amazing to my wonderful family and to one day get down on bended knee and propose to the man I love, ready to be there for each other until we are old.

I have no idea if Cirque Du Soleil are planning to bring their Michael Jackson: Immortal show down to Australia, but I would buy a ticket just to see this act which by the sounds of it is at the very end of the show. I have always loved the roman rings when watching gymnastics competitions but adding a circus performance twist to them and having four guys doing them synchronised would just be sex under the big top! Having cute brothers doing it certainly doesn’t hurt.

It seems to be almost a rule that when you go on a date one person is more attracted than the other. I guess it makes it all the more special when you do find someone that is equally attracted rather than the more common equally unattracted.

Last night I had a date-ish scenario with a guy that I’d been chatting to on facebook for a long time. My overall impression of the evening that he was considering it a date much more than I was. I went in to the evening with very low expectations other than some good conversation, which we had, decent pub food, which we had and a couple of beers, yep, had those too.

As a card carrying member of the chronically single club, albeit with a brief lapse in membership last year, it can be disheartening to go on date after date where the imbalance is so blindingly clear, especially if you are on the more attracted end of the spectrum. I’ve had some great dates that never went anywhere for one reason or another and I’ve had some dates that I’ve been home and writing a blog post about within 2 hours of meeting the guy.

Some friends have suggested that people might be scared of going on a date with me for that reason. A fear of ending up a horror story on the blog. One foolproof method of avoiding that? Don’t be a lunatic, a horror story or just downright rude. Those are the stories that make the blog.

Once again it’s time to work your magic and merge your creative brain with your photography skills. We’ve had a self portrait challenge and a favourite place challenge and I wanted to come up with something interesting, challenging and visually fun to test you all this time. The theme for this challenge is repetition. I want you to submit a photograph that contains repetition of a pattern, a shape, of a shadow or whatever you like. Above are a few examples quickly found using a google image search on “repetition”.

Remember, the person whose submission is voted as the favourite in this challenge receives a print of Matthew’s winning submission from the Favourite Place challenge and their image will be given as a print to the favourite image of the next challenge. It’s a pay it forward style of reward.

The deadline for submissions for this challenge, like the Happy Project, is Monday 30th April. You’ve got 4 weeks. Get creative. Email all submissions to brenton.parry@gmail.com

UPDATE: As with the previous challenges, there is a limit to one submission per person!

I’ve had two comments on yesterday’s “etiquette” post telling me to stop being so judgemental. Well technically one comment saying that and another agreeing. I thought it was pretty clear from the outset that all the “etiquette” posts are written with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek and absolutely dripping in sarcasm. They are a joke. Maybe I don’t write well or I was having an off day.

If it was the comment about the guy’s pubes at the end that offended, then I don’t know what to say. I’m not going to apologise. I’ve never been particularly good at political correctness and when I’m being chastised for saying something that every single one of you would have been thinking then I won’t make a hypocrite of myself by not saying it. If that offends you then I will apologise for that, but it was not my intention and I will say that I think political correctness has gone completely overboard.

As I said to the two commenters, the post yesterday was inspired by my own feelings of insecurity yesterday. I saw someone I knew and hadn’t seen in a long time but was feeling too out of shape and unfit to go and say hello, only highlighted by the fact that he was looking fantastic.

Something newcomers to the nude beach environment will notice is that there are people there of every shape and size which is a very good thing. However, when one sees someone one knows at the nude beach it potentially creates a scenario when one or both parties can be uncomfortable.

How to handle the situation if you do see someone you know? If the person you know is in better shape than ones self, simple, avoid them at all costs, especially if one has let oneself go since the last time the two of you saw each other. Why on earth would one want them to be able to think that one has gone to seed?

If on the other hand the other person is the one to have let themselves go, of course it’s perfectly acceptable to stride confidently towards them and say hello. If one can’t make the most of feeling fabulous then what is the point of all those hours in the gym and calorie counting?

One last piece of nude beach etiquette. If one’s pubic hair has completely consumed one’s genitals, it’s time for a trim.

Last week I posted a promotional video from a new menswear label called Utility Menswear, started by some very dear friends of mine. There are benefits to being friends with people starting a new fashion label because they can’t afford huge advertising budgets so they call aspiring photographers like me to help them create their advertising material. Then they cast beautiful men like Joe that was in the video and Nick here who was so much fun to work with.

Nick Robinson is represented by Priscillas Model Management here in Sydney and you’d be hard pressed to find someone more professional but still fun to shoot.

AussieBum have just launched the 2012 edition of what has to be one of their most successful ranges of all time, League. It’s available in a bunch of colours in both square-cut and brief styles. Modelled by the ever stunning Andreas, they look fantastic.

Bruce Weber has long been a favourite photographer of mine. He’s also been the top choice of Abercrombie & Fitch to shoot their catalogues and quarterly publications which are a smorgasbord of beautiful flesh for the eyes. Now he’s done it again directing this video for A&F. It’s allegedly about wrestling but I didn’t think there was much official wrestling done in groups in showers. I’m certainly not complaining though.

Unfortunately the video I had here was removed for some reason. Fortunately, it’s now on Youtube.

I’ve realised that some of you might be finding it difficult to figure out what to film for the Happy Project video submission. Essentially I want you to film something that makes you smile, laugh, or just feel good. Autumn leaves blowing in the breeze, a sunset, waves, kids laughing, coffee pouring. Anything. I found these two videos in the last couple of days and I’m posting them as inspiration. Why do these videos make me happy? One is mates having a fantastic time enjoying beautiful weather and a beautiful big wide ocean. The other is one man, meeting many many people and exploring. Both of them made me smile.

Today I read a very disturbing news article online about the reaction of some viewers of the Hunger Games to the fact that several of the main characters are black. Now these people consider themselves fans and considering the movie had the third highest opening weekend takings of all time they are probably very keen fans of the books. If they’d read the books carefully, characters like Rue were described as having dark complexion or dark skin, fairly clearly written to be black. The article I was reading has several twitter screen caps of the reactions which were disgusting in their racism. “Why does Rue have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie” WTF? Seriously? Another reads “call me racist but when I found out Rue was black her death wasn’t as sad.”

This kind of amazingly outdated racism astonishes me. I’m the first to admit that I grew up in a very white area. Other nationalities were certainly around and at high school there was a wider variety of race but if you look at my school photos the class is very white. I was NEVER brought up to believe that it made me better than anyone else. How can people think that these kind of attitudes are ok?

Someone commenting on the article on twitter did point out that they are young kids and had twitter and social media been around when I was a teenager we all probably made some stupid comments too but these are forever recorded for the world to see.