Sweat Under Gear Man Yannick

This is the first ever Sweat Under Gear shoot. When we started to look for a model we had no idea where to begin, until it donned on us – where are all the big hot men??
bigmuscle.com of course. We wanted to find a local guy and started to search the Vancouver pages of Big Muscle. This is where we came across Yannick. At the time he was living in beautiful Victoria and working in the Navy. Yes, could it get any better? Great looking man in the Navy and his profile stated he would love to do some modeling. We promptly sent Yannick a message and yes it does get better. Lucky for us Yannick was preparing for his first ever bodybuilding competition and would be in Vancouver within a couple weeks to compete.

We knew a photographer that lives across the street from us and we asked him if he would be willing to shoot Yannick. After seeing Yannick’s profile on Big Muscle he of course signed on for the shoot immediately. Christopher C North is no longer a photographer and we often wonder if shooting Yannick was his swan song.

We always imagined a Sweat Under Gear Club and the characters who might inhabit this place of all things manly. The club became (at least in our minds) a place where blue collar and white collar men go after a long day at work to release pent up frustrations – in Sweat Under Gear. They box, fix motorbikes and cars, shower – fun stuff like that. This is still reflected in our website www.sweatundergear.com and a very important aspect of our marketing.

So where do we shoot Yannick? Before releasing the information on the Sweat Under Gear Club we wanted to tease you a bit with the workers at their jobs getting ready to go someplace hot and fun. Not actually revealing what that place was.

During all of this we were also having our home renovated and our contractor told us that next door to his house there was a new townhouse complex going in. He suggested we head over to his place and at 6pm when the workers go home next door that we sneak over there with our cameras and lights and shoot Yannick as a construction worker.

Up to this point we had not actually met Yannick in person and had arranged to pick him up in front of a Starbucks and bring him to the shoot. We pulled up to Starbucks, Yannick hopped in the car and his adorable French Canadian accent said “It has been a long time since I have gotten into a strange man’s car” From that time on we knew we would be friends and that he was perfect for this shoot.

6pm we watched as the workers left for the day and in we snuck to do our shoot. It was a very cold winter night so we brought a heater for Yannick to keep warm in between takes. We might add that Yannick is not the shy type and had no qualms about changing in front of the entire crew.

Over the following week we released the photos to the blogs. Sweat Under Gear had gone viral and within days we were receiving emails from every corner of the planet anxious to purchase our product. We were stunned and extremely happy.

Yannick became so popular that it was a no brainer to put him on the Sweat Sport Brief box. Yannick has shot with us again (we will have that in a future post here), he has danced at events for us and most importantly has remained a friend. We are sure that 2010 will bring another photo shoot with the original ‘Sweat Man’.

Next we will tell you the story of the 'Dirty Garage'. Watch for that this Friday.