Sexy Men of YEG Food 2016

Stripping down for the Edmonton Food Bank

By Bri Vos

November 19^th, 2015

Round Two

After the incredible success of the 2015 Sexy Men of YEG Food calendar, we decided to get a bit more serious about its potential to raise money for the Edmonton Food Bank. We saw fantastic support from the media (both locally and nationally) and committed to running a second annual calendar for 2016.

Model Selection

While we were used to cajoling our friends and colleagues into the 2015 calendar, this time around we had people knocking down our door to be involved. We held an application process which led to the tough job of deciding on the final 12 men making the cut for 2016. This was not an easy task. Receiving over 25 applications through the YEG SEXY website, we only had 12 spots to fill.

The criteria for involvement required applicants to tell the directors about their involvement in the YEG food scene, share with us an idea of their ideal photoshoot and provide us with a satirical sexy selfie to show they had the ability to be good natured about the project.

More Peach Schnapps

We started our shoots on a quiet Sunday morning with Gabor at Bon Ton Bakery. He‘s their head bread baker and an expert in long fermentation loaves. While Bon Ton is closed on Sundays, he had prepped some dough and a few loaves for us to use in the shoot. He brings to the table his sly European looks and arms well-muscled from years of dough kneading.

The next guy to participate was Josh from North 53. He‘s one of the chefs that turns out creations that look almost too good to eat. Coincidentally, he had just had a new leather apron made by a local Edmonton artist and it was the perfect addition for this shoot. While his co-workers prepped for that evening‘s service we made him sharpen knives, cut herbs and juice citrus in the most sexy of ways.

A special addition to this year‘s calendar is two volunteers at the Edmonton Food Bank, Don & Richard. These two have volunteered their time and skill to the food bank for years and we caught up with them at Heritage Festival where they were flexing their muscles and operating the pink forklift to organize and manage food bank donations.

When we scheduled our shoot with Levi of Attilla the HUNgry Food Truck, we didn‘t anticipate that we‘d also be fighting a hail storm, but that‘s what happens sometimes. Despite being pelted with hail, we stuck it out and intrigued a whole section of the Yellowhead industrial area by photographing Levi half naked against his truck in the stormy evening light.

Only a day later, when we were shooting at Tyler‘s farm south east of Edmonton, we had the most beautiful evening light and prairie sunset. Between rolling in the grass with the sows and fending off the boars while being sprayed with a garden hose, Tyler was a great sport.

We met up with Alexi and Mo in the space they work out of at McEwan University. The guys had been curing meat and prepping pigs heads that week and while they don‘t usually strip down to prep their delicious sandwiches, they took only a little convincing and a craft beer or two to get into the spirit.

As the summer turned to the golden colours of fall, we met Perry one evening after work at ACME Meat Market. He can butcher a lamb like no one‘s business and so it was an obvious choice for us to use that day‘s lamb delivery in our shoot with him. It‘s always difficult to decide whether knowing a participant personally makes a shoot better or well, more awkward, but with Perry it was easy to find a balance between the humour and the sexy.

Jeremy, one of the founders of MealShare, met up with us on a chilly morning in September with a big smile and an open mind. He was up for anything and despite the cold temperatures, easily stripped down to accommodate our requests. Whether rolling on frosty wet grass in his shorts or waiting for gawking pedestrians to pass us on the bridge while we shot, he was a good sport about it all.

On a quiet Sunday we drove to Dominic‘s place outside of Sherwood Park to see what Catfish Coffee Roasters was all about. He and his family were incredibly welcoming and had done a fair bit of planning to figure out what might work great in the shots. After shooting with him around their yard and in their roasting shop, we sat down to a meal with his family and really enjoyed getting to know them. We eventually had to cut our visit short because we had to head up to St Albert to photograph Tu at Jack‘s Burger Shack.

A little hesitant at first, Tu was up for anything we would suggest. In the end, his quiet, calm nature won out and he was a natural just relaxing at a table in his shop.

We managed to hit up John at Gold Forest Grains on the perfect kind of harvest evening. While the late season moisture meant there were still crops in the field, it worked out well for our needs. We drove a little ways into the fields and out of view of his neighbours and as he stripped down in the grain, he confessed that he had done some modelling in his youth. He hit it out of the park and we wrapped this shoot in only 20 min!

Finally, we headed out to Kitscotty area to check out Addie who was hard at work at The Cheesiry. He invited us into the cooler which was absolutely filled with rows of maturing cheese wheels. It was a beautiful sight. With only a little bit of encouragement from the head cheesemaker, he shed his shirt and hefted the best looking wheels of cheese we‘ve seen in a long time!