Brenton Parry

The story behind Night Swim

Added 2022-12-23 04:15:35 +0000 UTC

Kieran has appeared in three of my downloads, Night Swim, Garage and Red. This is the story of the first shoot we collaborated on, Night Swim.

I honestly can't remember how I met Kieran but I have a feeling it was through the blog that I used to run. He was only about 21 at the time and lived about an hour away but was really keen to do a shoot with me. Like our next collaboration, Garage, we did the shoot in the middle of the night. Firstly because I wanted the moody light from a floodlight and also because you aren't legally allowed to be nude at Bronte pool. Although I know for a fact lots of people have skinny dipped there over the years.

It was officially the beginning of Autumn when we did this shoot and at 1:30 am it wasn't a warm evening. To illustrate what I mean, Kieran turned up in a leather jacket and wasn't too warm.

Now because of the low levels of light, I had to shoot on a tripod which is very unusual for me. Each image was a 5 second exposure. That is a definite no-no when it comes to photographing people because it's almost impossible to keep them still enough for sharpness. Add in the fact that the model was trying not to shiver and it was an awkward shoot.

My friend and former model himself, Jonathan came along on the shoot and I have vague recollections of him filming but there is no footage anywhere so maybe he was there to assist. I honestly can't remember.

Kieren has quite impressive balls on him but after being an absolute star and suffering through the cold water, they were pretty much inside his body by the end of the shoot and he was shivering for a while. As soon as Kieran was dressed, two women turned up for a cheeky late night swim. I very much doubt they would have been offended by Kieren's nudity but I was relieved we were done.

We got Kieran home and under a hot shower to thaw out and the fool was silly enough to agree to the Garage shoot less than a month later.

I've always loved this shoot and it is definitely in my plans to revisit this scenario/location to do a shoot for my exhibition.