"Les" – The Cover Concept

"Les," is from BRONC Vol. 1, No. 6 November 1982. Once published bimonthly by Blueboy, Inc. (Copyright 1982), this issue is 17 years old. Bronc has been out of print a long time, maybe since 1984. Blueboy has also recently ceased publication. To be respectful of copyright, we decided to recreate the photograph. Health Canada also expressed concern over the amount of jock showing. "If we have to defend the book, we don't want to have to start with the cover."

Original Photos

Les seemed to embody the type of guy that Danny wanted to portray, "Big wheeler and cowboy all rolled into one." His archetypal stance represented the kind of free will or agency that Danny wanted for representing male sex workers. The shot was recreated using a model named Shalia, and was photographed by "Rod Bush" (Rosamond Norbury). "Rod Bush" published a beautiful book of photographs of rodeo men, titled, . The stylist was who works in the film industry.

Photos by Rod Bush

The Final Greyscale Coverwrap

The model Shalia was a good deal thinner than Les. His mustache was fake (which was apparent in the photographs). With extensive Photoshop work, the model was stretched wider by 13 per cent. Also, there was a backdrop sheet that had to be removed from the background. The belt was removed and pasted back in later. That much stretch of the belt would have made the manipulation noticeable. The cover took more than 40 hours of work in Adobe Photoshop.