Unprompted Smile: Phil Bruce by Andrew Bowman

I love featuring the work of Oxford England's Andrew Bowman. Andrew's images are more than just sexy dipictions of the male form, they are bright, colorful and visually energetic. It is clear the man behind the camera isn't taking himself too seriously, really enjoys what he does, and strives to bring out that same joy within the subjects that he is shooting.


A couple of weeks ago, Andrew posted an image (the last one below) of 24 year old Performance Specialist, Personal Trainer and model Phil Bruce. All of the joy I feel when spending time with Andrew's work shone through the image of Phil, especially through his beautiful and incredibly infectious smile. I immediately shot Andrew a not asking about the possibility of featuring his work with Phil. Thankfully, both photographer and model were on board and these are some of my favorite shots from their work together.


'Our shoot together was first discussed before Christmas, and we finally got round to it in early March. This was mainly to fit in with my shooting schedule, which is mainly restricted to saturdays at the moment, and Phil's sporting activities. Phil is a physical instruction trainer, and as his facebook entries confirm, a very committed one.'


'Phil spent the morning in the gym in Staffordshire and then drove 170 miles down to the Oxfordshire shoot with his folks. We did a 4 hour shoot whilst his parents did a bit of sightseeing around Oxford. Phil was a really nice guy to work with and it was clear he puts 100% into everything he does. We mixed a bit of fashion, which is a nice change for me, with some fitness stringers and of course some daring undies (provided to me by L'Homme Invisible in Paris a few weeks before).'


If Phil's great body and incredible smile weren't enough to create great visuals, Phil also has such beautiful and brown eyes, full of expression. Phil's eyes draw you into whatever theme or mood he is going for. They light up when he smiles, and also be soulful and sad when required, expressing deep longing and pain. Phil also has a great body and look for fashion and is the perfect representative and model for anything he is wearing.


Phil clearly works hard to maintain his appearance and physique, with a strong passion for fitness and health. Phil covers the fitness spectrum from head to toe currently working around the Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire area as a self employed sports performance specialist, personal trainer, fitness presenter, nutrition advisor, exercise instructor as well as football coach. If that weren't enough, Phil also plays Football Semi-Professionally, and runs his own Soccer School aptly titled; 'The Phil Bruce Soccer School'.


'It was fantastic to meet Andy, he is such a nice guy and an easy photographer to work with. We had both got a lot of different ideas, so there was a lot of variety from the shoot. We managed to get through three Robbie Williams albums during the shoot, which is ace as Robbie is a fellow Stokie and a hero of mine. Andy is a really good guy and we managed to talk about loads of things. I am really looking forward to working with him again in the near future.'