Photography students collaborate on new Lenslife app

BA (Hons) Digital Photography students were involved in a two-part collaboration with new start-up, creative communication platform, Lenslife. They were tasked with generating unique photography content and actively participating in a feedback loop for the development and improvement of the new platform.

Lenslife is an image-centric alternative to email and text messengers designed for creatives; from photographers and fashion designers, to retailers and interior designers. It looks to provide distributed creative teams working remotely with a more efficient and sustainable means of communicating around visual content compared with traditional communication tools. Taking into account how many more creative professionals are working from home due to Covid-19, the platform's position in the market has never been more important. Lenslife's offering helps to improve productivity by streamlining the feedback process, making it quicker and easier for creatives to collaborate on visual content remotely.

As part of the brief, students were asked to create a series of five images which could stand alone or be presented collectively. The images needed to follow a story, portraying how a creative professional might use Lenslife and how the platform helps its users to ‘embrace remote work’. Students then pitched the idea to the company’s CEO who evaluated the resolution, composition and image dynamics. It was important to use the correct hashtags and links for building engagement, and that the content be ‘sticky’ enough to maintain traction for a successful marketing campaign on Instagram. 

The second part of the collaboration involved the students contributing to feedback sessions where their input would play a part in the development of the platform as a specialised image-centric collaboration and networking tool. Lenslife were incredibly impressed with the quality of the students work, especially given it was produced under lockdown conditions. As a result of this, Lenslife will be incorporating several pieces of student content in their upcoming marketing campaign and have expressed that they would like to work closely with a number of students who they felt excelled at the project.

Co-founder of Lenslife, Jacqueline Lauren, discussed the collaboration by saying “the opportunity to have a focused and dedicated series of photographs produced for our social media is a hugely beneficial for a start-up.” 

Of the work produced, Jacquie says there were “a few standout students who nailed the brief and we will be using the entire series they created.” The students were producing work under lockdown conditions which provided its own challenges, but they also needed to consider the sustainability aspect which was “one of the biggest challenges for the students, as it pushed them to think outside of the box and to make adjustments to their own processes in order to work in a more sustainable way.” 

Lenslife’s publicist thought the images were so impressive she took the concept for the campaign to trade publications that Lenslife were looking to feature in. “They were so impressed that students were able to produce such high-quality work, which in some cases, were ready to go to print.” Jacquie adds that Lenslife “would absolutely work with Ravensbourne again, we will be engaging a number of students that we worked with on this brief to shoot another series for us down the line. They had a very clear and identifiable style about their work which we vibed with and loved.” 

It is a stunning achievement for a number of our students to have their work selected by Lenslife for their social media campaign! Ravensbourne will be continuing its relationship with Lenslife by engaging in future student collaborations and helping to build new creative networks using the platform as a core form of communication.