Lifestyle Photography For The City of Burlington
BP imaging underwent a lifestyle photography project for Burlington Transit (BT) through The City of Burlington. The project consisted of 12 students that were selected from the Burlington Transit Youth Ambassador (BTYA) Program to be photographed for a Burlington Transit promotional campaign.
Burlington Transit Youth Ambassador Program
The BTYA Program was developed by BT with the help of Burlington Green to raise community awareness on the subject of transportation methods and their impact on the environment. Burlington Green is a non-profit environmental organization that promotes awareness to individuals, groups, businesses and governments to create an environmentally responsible city.
The Ambassador Program involves students that promote the use of public transit at their particular high school in Burlington, Ontario. Two students at each high school are involved in leading transit promotions and special events through the school year to encourage transit ridership. Meetings are held by Burlington Transit with youth ambassadors across Burlington to assist in generating creative ideas and provide feedback/support to improve the promotion of the ambassador program and the use of public transit. On Earth Day, Burlington Transit provides the essential promotional tools including posters, brochures, prizes and stickers to assist students in attracting the attention of their classmates. These promotional events and activities are planned with the student ambassadors in mind and are offered during the students lunch or spare periods.
The BTYA Program benefits the community through environmental awareness and the promotion of multiple transportation alternatives, but also provides the students a great lesson by allowing them the opportunity to gain real world marketing experience. Students even have the chance to win $1,000 (donated by Burlington Mall) for their schools environmental group or eco-club to assist in improving the eco-initiative at their school.
The Lifestyle Photography
The students involved in the lifestyle photography shoot were not models, they had to perform in front of the camera based on the creative conversations they were having in the graphic cloud above their heads. As you can see in the images, the students did a great job and had a variety of facial expressions to offer. The students were put on the spot for this photo shoot and handled the pressure very well. Someone would read a line from a list to one of the students and they would have to act out the facial expressions and body language associated with that line. The students were all fantastic and really got into their parts, creatively coming up with a variety of different expressions for each shot. A total of 700 images were taken which is about 60 shots per student. That isn’t an easy task when you aren’t familiar with being in front of the camera.
The final shots from the photo shoot were used in the campaign for advertisement on buses and bus shelters. View the BTYA brochure to see our photography being used on a Burlington Transit bus shown on the front cover! In the end, The City of Burlington art department put together a great campaign and are thinking of doing something similar again this year.
