SI invites Bostonians to be part of 'Boston Strong' cover shoot

Sports Illustrated invited Bostonians to be part of a 7 a.m. Saturday photo shoot featuring Boston Strong. A photo from the shoot will serve as the cover of the next issue of Sports Illustrated, which will hit newsstands April 16. Here's a storify from the event, which took place at the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth, the finish line of the 2014 Boston Marathon.

"Boston Strong" has served as a rallying cry for the city since the tragic bombing at last year's marathon, in which three people were killed and more than 260 wounded when two bombs exploded near the finish line. For the cover photo of the issue immediately following the bombings, Sports Illustrated used the famous image of a runner who had been knocked over by the force of the explosions lying before three police officers at the scene.

Sports Illustrated managing editor Chris Stone described the motivation behind the photo shoot.

"Boston Strong is a story about people, ordinary people doing extraordinary things, ordinary people doing ordinary things. SI's creative director, Chris Hercik, believed the best way to tell this story a year later was to bring all those people, or as many as possible, into a single photo at the finish line. If you look at last year's cover photo, you see all that empty space all the way down Boylston Street filled by smoke and that backdrop of chaos and destruction. This year's photo fills those spaces with the Bostonians who wrote the Boston Strong story."