Sex and the Steel City 2012

tyler hayward has added a photo to the pool:

+3 in comments!

Continuing the string of uploads…today is the day when we all finally get to see the Sex and the Steel City (SATSC) in print!! It’ll be available today around 3, bundled with the usual edition of the newspaper, so if you’re reading this and attend McMaster University, grab a copy right now!!
Huge thanks to the volunteers, models, editors and photographers who all poured their hearts, bodies, ideas, time, money and timmies into this issue to make it a big success!

So about this image…We had finished up shooting over two weeks for 10 conceptual photos to pair with articles, but were still lacking a cover two days before we were going to send it off to print. I was racking my brain trying to think of something epic that I would be happy to look back upon. I picked through many design magazines, looking at conceptual photos that would be interesting to attempt and still seemed risqué. Gizmodo had actually released a steel wool challenge the week of and I had seen a video about it before; the concept of stuffing a whisk full of steel wool, lighting it on fire and then spinning it around sounded quite tempting, but I never thought of attempting it myself. I pictured we could shoot just outside the arch at night to draw as little attention as possible, so I contacted the models and Ian and Brandi were fantastic to work with and so easy going, they were fine with whatever and we decided to shoot around 10pm on Friday night, just before the reading week break, so campus was extra dead. Luckily Bahram had experience performing with fire (??!?!) so after I had already volunteered him, he said he’d be fine spinning the steel on fire  (thank youuuuuuuuuu). Renee and Jon were also a big help, assisting with the lights and booming them over the models and kept everyone’s spirits high even though it was frigid outside.

I was able to pick up everything I needed at the dollar store before the shoot…2 packs of steel wool (I was worried they wouldn’t carry any, but they had one brand!), 1 dog chain (seemed stable enough to spin around), 3 whisks (different sizes and figured they’d break…which they did), I even bought safety gloves, goggles and a mask which Bahram refused to use… it came out to under $10 for everything.

I shot a longish exposure after a few test shots and determined 3-4 seconds was the sweet spot to fire off multiple shots while keeping enough fire in the background and used the strobes to freeze the models and illuminate their bodies. You can see the Apollo got caught a bit in each exposure, so some cropping had to be done.

Strobist
Canon 5d mk II
Canon 85mm f/1.2L II @ f/8
2x Canon 580 exII @ ½ power each inside Westcott Apollo boomed by Jon over the models
Cactus v5’s for trigger