**Willi Gardner models at Vasquez Rocks in California. Photo by Scott Lewis**

By Tom Victoria

Willi Gardner illuminates the shot as the camera flashes. The stunning model poses for fashion and fitness.

He stands out in every milieu, whether it’s an elegant studio backdrop or gorgeous scenery. Willi models to make art.

“I like to create,” he said. “I have always liked the collaborative creative process, and I am exceedingly comfortable being naked. I do not think of myself as an exhibitionist by any means, but for me, I can be clothed or naked and be just as comfortable. I would classify exhibitionism as getting something out of being seen naked, but for me, it's just comfortable.”

Willi, 30, of Los Angeles ramps up his modeling in the spring and summer.

“I've fallen into a rhythm last year and this year in the winter months, I'm not shooting as much,” he said. “I'm networking, but not really shooting. That's the bulking season for those who are so inclined. I do that. So when I'm not quite as lean, I try not to book as many shoots. Some people will be like, oh, you look great. I'm like, yeah, but I see the difference. It's a confidence thing, too, which comes off a lot on camera.”

Willi has an ample array of photos to release in coming months.

“I was trying to do a calendar, but things got away from me at the end of last year,” he said. “So I've got a lot of really good photos that I'm excited to put out this year.”

Willi wasn’t always comfortable in front of the camera as he wasn’t intending on becoming a model.

“I started shooting right before Covid happened,” he said. “That March right before Covid, I did my first photo shoot. That wasn't one that I had necessarily sought out. Someone had messaged me on Grindr and was like, hey, I like your look. I'm a photographer. Would you like to do a photo shoot? I thought it was cool. I was flattered that you think I am pretty enough for that, so I'll give it a shot. We had a cup of coffee, we chatted, and we hit it off. I sat there and we had a four-hour conversation without shooting. We just had a nice long chat, got to know each other and got really comfortable, and then set up the shoot for later that week or the following week. I really loved it.”

For Willi, it was the process that appealed to him.

“I love the combination of the creative, collaborative process,” he said. “The photographer has a vision. I take that, I implement it, and I can even turn around and go, well, what if I do X, Y or Z? I went to art school. I understand lighting. I know how to make an interesting silhouette. I understand collaboration and constructive criticism. It all meshes into my personality. I like to be easy to work with in that regard. All of it really. I like the process.”

Willi uses modeling as motivation to stay fit.

“It gives me something to work towards with my fitness goals, too,” he said. “I find if I don't have something to be working towards, I will not push as hard at the gym. I won't diet as hard. But if I'm going, okay, it is February 20, I need to be fit by May 1 so I can be photo shoot ready. I need to trim down. I need to do everything I need to do. It helps me stay on track, which I also enjoy. As someone who is very ADHD, having a deadline helps.”

Willi uses social media and websites to post his photos.

“Things that I can't post on Instagram, I post on OnlyFans,” he said. “I've been hoping to grow the OnlyFans a bit this year.”

Willi uses other sites as well.

“OnlyFans, to me, has the name recognition over something like JustforFans or Fansly,” he said. “I'm not trying to be an OnlyFans model or an OnlyFans boy where that's going to be my main source of income. It's just something that's fun on the side. I do what I do anyway, so I'll just be like, oh, well, photos from shoots that aren't going to get through Instagram sensors can go on OnlyFans. I can tease it on Twitter. I can put some of them on Model Mayhem. But I take the philosophy of: if you're paying for the OnlyFans, if you're paying a subscription monthly, I want you to make sure that I'm not posting everything everywhere anyways.”

Willi is interested in creating artistic shots.

“I tell photographers that I am sexy, I will do sexy, I will do sexual, but I'm not here to make porn,” he said. “I've definitely thought about it. Arguably things on OnlyFans count as that, but it scratches the creative itch. That's the point. I'm not just out here trying to use sex to make money, but I want to exercise my creativity.”

Willi screens photographers to ensure a better outcome.

“I have a lot of photographers reach out to me nowadays,” he said. “I have to go through their portfolio. Some of them are — I hate to use this term — they call it ‘guy with camera,’ which are the nonprofessional people who are trying to do photography. I would apply it to the people who are just trying to get me naked or take photos of naked boys. There are plenty of photographers out there who are very clearly just trying to get hot guys naked and take photos of them. I've gotten really good at parsing that out.”

Willi finds heartfelt smiles not the easiest expression to convey.

“As a general rule, a genuine smile tends to be really hard to capture because you can get a smile, but getting it just right is hard,” he said. “I just try to take those emotions and try to make the shot really more evocative as best I can. I can do the cute, the coy look really well, kind of on command. I can do the more stern, angrier expressions easily, but the genuine smiles are just so hard to capture on camera.”

Willi is known for being comfortable during shoots.

“I'd say I've been sought out by a lot of photographers because of my extreme comfortability being naked,” he said. “People have reached out to me. They'll tell me they can see from my portfolio how truly comfortable I am with the camera. Not every model wants to be fully nude. Not everyone's fully comfortable with that, and that's valid. I like to think that I can set an example and be like, hey, it's not that big of a deal. It's fun. It's a human body.”

Willi has no preference between outdoor or studio shoots.

“I don't in principle, but in practice, I have found that studios are more comfortable,” he said. “However, I have been trying to branch out and have a bigger variety of locations and backgrounds in my shots because I don't find it super interesting when every single one of my shots on my Instagram page are me standing against a black background or a gray background. I have nothing against shots like that. Those shots can be good as well, but I find them to just not be as interesting. There was a point where I had a lot of those. More recently, I have a lot less of those as I've tried to branch out, and because there could be a lot of personality in the background and foreground when we're shooting on location, too, which I enjoy playing with.”

Willi said there can be drawbacks to shooting on location, though.

“Sometimes, I joke photographers will have me strip down, then sit me down somewhere that is just the most uncomfortable,” he said. “There was one where I was just in a swimsuit or I was naked. I can't quite remember. I had to sit down in this bush that was absolutely crawling with bees or this one here: I just sat on rocks and branches and things. It was incredibly uncomfortable. But that's really my only gripe about shooting at a location.”

Willi doesn’t focus all of his time on modeling.

“I try to keep my projects pretty small,” he said. “I'm not super keen on leaving my day job to go try and enter the gig economy. I like having a steady income and knowing where and when my next paycheck is. I'm not relying on this for money, so I get to take the projects that I want with photographers that impress me, that clearly have a vision. Because my least favorite thing is to show up to a shoot and they just have just a backdrop and no ideas. I show up and they're just like, okay, well, just play with the space. I'm like, okay, I could have set up a backdrop at my apartment and played with the space.”

Willi requests the photographer express the ideas for the shoot.

“That's often the very first thing that I ask when a photographer reaches out,” he said. “You reached out to me, what vision do you have to work with me because it's a collaborative process. I'm happy to come up with ideas and everything, but ultimately I'm past the point where I need to get saturation in terms of photographers.”

Willi said there’s nothing wrong with the more explicit side of modeling and photography, but it’s not for him.

“I'm not saying there's no artistic merit in that, but that doesn't scratch the itch creatively for me,” he said. “I'll look at a portfolio and I'll be like, okay, what are these pieces saying to me, the audience? That's the same analysis I use when I'm trying to find pictures that are suitable to post somewhere. What does it say other than I want it to say something more than just I'm standing here and looking sexy. I want to involve the viewer and pull them in a little bit more than just another pretty boy to look at.”

Willi started working out before modeling, but takes it more seriously due to modeling.

“I was never really one to work out until college,” he said. “I got hooked on it. Over time, I've gotten more and more knowledgeable on routines and what works. When I graduated college, I got a gym membership back home. I was able to get four free personal training lessons. That set me up with a food regimen and a workout routine. I've since taken that and adapted it and changed it a lot over time. When I started doing the modeling, I definitely took it more seriously, especially when I consider I'm getting paid jobs. Anything that I get paid for, I try to bring the A game. I try to make it worth being paid for. My goal is four, five, six days a week. More recently, I've just been really busy with all sorts of life things, and it's been closer to two, three, four days a week the past few months.”

Willi works in the medical field.

“I currently work as a medical assistant,” he said. “I stay busy Monday through Friday, then I tend to do my shoots on the weekends. Last year, I was shooting about two to three shoots a weekend from May to October. Not every single weekend was two to three shoots. Some were just one shoot, some would be four shoots. I keep pretty busy overall.”

Willi didn’t have medical knowledge when he started his career.

“I was working at a spine clinic,” he said. “I had no knowledge. I had been working at a grocery store. I had graduated college. I had my art degree, my degree in game art doing 3-D characters for games. I knew that I had people skills. I knew that I learned things quickly. And I knew that I had a good work ethic. If you can convey that in an interview and that you're a generally pleasant and sane individual, you're 70 percent of the way there. Technical skills can be taught, I'm not going to say very easily. I'm not the doctor. I don't have to go in and see patients. I don't have to have this encyclopedic knowledge of everything, but I can be taught the specific knowledge that I need for a spine surgeon or a foot surgeon to help facilitate their jobs.”

Willi now carries that knowledge.

“After my work for the spine surgeon, I worked for an orthopedic doctor, so bones, and he was also a hand surgeon,” he said. “I worked for a foot doctor, and now I work for an awesome spine surgeon. So I gained the experience of all the various bones, all the insurances, worker’s comp, personal injury, how everything works. I know the process front to back. Now I can take that and I can do whatever I want.”

Willi enjoys being able to help people at work.

“I do like that I can facilitate people getting better,” he said. “I can make the difference for them, and I can make sure that they get taken care of to the best of my ability. Ultimately in a small way, I get to help people even if it's not absolutely life-changing things. I don't have the ability or the time that I would like to do volunteering or things that I used to do when I had more time as a teenager, so it scratches that itch a little bit.”

Willi has overlapped from modeling into acting.

“I've done a little bit of acting,” he said. “I would love to do more acting, actually. I really enjoyed what little I've done so far. Funnily enough, I can do monologues. But it's dialogues that I actually struggle with. Sometimes, I turn to the director and be like, do people really talk like this? I have a certain way that I talk, so it's like it can feel so unnatural.”

Photo by Mx. Valentino

Willi savored the treatment a thespian received on set.

“It wasn't a porn movie, but it was an adult kind of funny, kind of silly thing,” he said. “I don't know that they ever actually ended up releasing it yet. There were cuts of it that they were still working on. It was a fun time. A lot of shoots are just me and a photographer, and that's it. But showing up and having a small production team, I get to be a diva. I don't have to move anything. I don't have to move the lights. I don't have to give input on camera position or anything like that. I get to show up, eat the snacks and make jokes about waiting in my trailer as I sit and wait in the other room.”

Wiili is open about his orientation.

“I get to be out and happy,” he said. “It's important that people see that. I'm bisexual, and I identify as gay. It's easier in the moment. I went to a water park and water parks are full of families and straight people. I wore a speedo. I wasn't hurting anyone. I wasn't flaunting anything. I realized if kids can realize there are people who are out there being happy, some sort of reflection of them, it gives them a chance. If people see me at Pride walking around in my underwear on the street, sure, there is sex appeal in that, but people should feel like they can be comfortable with their bodies and who they are and with their identity. A lot of people don't get that. I like that aspect of being able to put my art online and being who I am as a person in real life, being able to encourage people.”

Willi appreciates having received support since coming out years ago.

“A lot of people don't come from happy homes,” he said. “Even living in California, there's a lot of people that don't have that. I've been incredibly lucky and privileged to have a family that accepts me. I didn't realize I was bisexual until my boyfriend, now he's my fiance, came around. I was 20. I consolidated my online identity to be uniform. I am not going to hide any part of myself. If people don't like it, they can f*** off. I don't care if you don't like who I am. That's how my parents raised me to be. I don't need to change myself for anyone as long as I'm trying to be the best person I can be.”

Willi said people in the LGBTQ+ community tend to be creative and successful.

“There is the general ability to be creative, because a lot of times those communities tend to be more accepting as well,” he said. “Creative communities like the stereotype of the theater tend to be more accepting. Then you have your, they call it gay exceptionalism: the need to prove yourself as exceptional because, look, I did all this despite being gay. It’s not the part that is said out loud, but it is parts that are internalized by a lot of people. A combination of those two factors, you get a lot of really high-achieving gay creators. A lot of them can achieve some pretty awesome things.”

Willi’s personal life is interesting as well doing polyamory, having multiple intimate relationships with the full knowledge and consent of all parties involved. As could be expected, maintaining such relationships isn’t simple.

“It's hard because it takes a lot of time,” he said. “I want to make sure I'm the best partner I can be for my fiance. I want to make sure I'm the best partner I can be for my boyfriend. So I can be spread a bit thin, especially if I also want to do hobbies and keep up a social life. The philosophy behind polyamory is I'm not limited in the amount of love that I have. I can have so much love in my life. It's fantastic to be able to have that.”

Willi said the lifestyle suits them.

“It's been good,” he said. “It adds a lot of joy and happiness to our lives. It's interesting to approach it in a way because we're in a gay relationship. We already have broken the norms, so what's to say we can't do whatever we want? The only difficult thing is there are no super prevalent examples to look to of how everything should work. We have to figure out just what works for us and overall, just communicate.”

Willi explained logistics is a major factor in polyamory.

“We're still finding what works and what doesn't,” Willi said. “It's a lot of bouncing back and forth, a lot of calendars and logistics, and I'm like, I already do that for work with doctors’ schedules.”

Willi dispensed advice to aspiring models.

“I would say that you just have to start doing it,” Willi said. “You have to make sure that you're comfortable in front of the camera, that you can collaborate with people. It doesn't work well when the photographer or director says, okay, I want a little bit more of this, and you snap back and go, oh, I'm already doing it. Being able to be collaborative and take constructive criticism are probably the most important skills. If you can take constructive criticism and apply it, you'll go really far. If you can apply the good advice and eventually learn to parse out what is good advice and what is not, that would be the key.”

He stressed the importance of creating something worthy of a model’s time.

“Do it because you like to create something cool,” he said. “Don't just go, I want to be a model because I want to be a supermodel or I want to become a big Instagram model star. It can happen, and with enough work and effort, maybe. But if that's the reason that you're doing it, going in, you've already failed because you have to get that fulfillment and do what makes you happy.”

Willi’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/its.willi.g/

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