Sweat Under Gear Man Travis

Continuing in our recap series of the last 2 years, this is forever referred to as the ‘Garage Boy’ shoot. Shortly after the success of the Yannick shoot we decided to do another Sweat Under Gear teaser shoot but this time in a garage. The concept was to be the same in that this was to be another blue collar worker wearing Sweat and preparing to head out from his work place to the Sweat Club.

To secure a model, we put an advert out on Vancouver’s craigslist. It was here that we first came across Nery Monzon and his company MUUM Production. MUUM is company that has a stable of male models, photographers and makeup artists. How can we best describe Nery, a whole lot of Janice Dickinson, a dash of Richard Simmons with some Perez Hilton thrown in.

Nery sent us pictures of one of his models, Travis and told us about a mechanic garage we could use - get this - in Surrey. For those of you who don’t know what or whereSurrey is, Google it, but be very very afraid.

The night of the shoot (we had to wait until the garage closed to customers at 6pm) we started our trek to the deepest darkest regions of Surrey. Being winter in the BC Lower Mainland it was already dark, cold and starting to snow. We pulled into the parking lot, parked the Sweat mobile and the first thing we noticed was what can only be described as crackheads doing whatever it is they do right there out in the open. Oh and then there was the hooker standing on the other side of the street. Nice area. We made the decision to bring everything that was in the vehicle with us as we had visions of coming out of the shoot and finding it broken into and everything missing. Or worse the entire vehicle gone. Surrey has something like 1 car every minute stolen. That We got out of the car, literally stepped over the crackheads and into the garage.

Inside the shop Nery was already running around with makeup people and clothing people and was a just a huge scurry of activity. We were introduced to Travis who was trying to keep warm without his shirt on and about that time we noticed a female model and a bunch of, hmmm, booty clothes hanging around. This was our first introduction the Nery’s little surprises. It seems he had a girlfriend who asked if she could participate in the shoot to beef up her own portfolio. She was/is extremely nice and we thought sure why not, as long as we get our pics of Travis we needed.

She brought about 15 possible outfits and each one was smaller than the first. We settled on one that was the least ‘booty call’ of them all. At least that is what we thought. The premise for her shoot was that she is the pinup girl on the wall calendar of the garage who has come to life and needing her vehicle fixed by the hot mechanic. Okay sure.

We should also mention that this was our very first shoot with photographer Nuno Silva. Nuno is not just a photographer, he is an artist. Whatever concept we throw at him, he takes it that step further and it turns out better than we could have imagined. We will focus more on Nuno in another blog entry in this series.

The camera started snapping, the snow outside was falling and Travis was freezing. We set up a heater next to him to keep warm but his legs turned red from the heat. Good thing for Photoshop. Once we completed the solo shots we brought the female model on to set and the two of them kept each other warm…enough said about that. We wrapped up shoot, stepped back over the crackheads and into the Sweat mobile and back home.

One of the things we love about our customers and fans is that you are not afraid to tell us what you like and what you dislike. We sent these photos out to the blogosphere, some with the female model and some without. Boy did we get an earful about her outfit and the concept of her character in the shoot. We stand by the quality of this shoot considering the idea was thrown at us at the last minute. For the record, we just finished a new shoot with her and you will see her in a much different light Dec 01 when we release them. As for Travis, we have shot with him again and he appears on our Sweat Jockstrap box. This shoot was the first time Travis had ever worn a jockstrap and now he loves them and shows up in the infamous ‘arm wrestle’ shoot wearing it again. Keep wearing those jocks Travis we love seeing you in them!

Monday is all about the office (white collar) shoot and the introduction of the Sweat Man Bouncer.

However, this Saturday we have some new Jake photos to show you.