Pathways to Success

By now, most of you have heard about the Pathways to Success project. This project was a creation of the President’s Advisory Committee on First Nation’s Initiatives, and driven by First Nation Initiatives and College Relations. It was created to highlight the positions within the First Nations Governments filled by former Yukon College students, and how they got there.

I was fortunate enough to work on this project with the shoot coordinator, photographer, graphic designer and all the amazing role models. This blog is about all the interesting things that happen behind the scenes for each of our Role Model posters. There is a lot of fun stories when you shoot a campaign in -25 weather, in the forest behind the college.

Trish was such a great sport, even though it was freezing cold out there, she managed to look relaxed and comfortable in a short sleeved shirt … Though the award for trooper in the cold goes to Lauren for sure …. Trish brought along her son, he was so polite and sweet, we went for a walk to the bookstore while they were shooting, and by the way he was impressed with the bookstore and the size of the College, we may have a future student in that little guy.

Lauren definitely wins the award for trooper in the cold … First of all, that dress was made and designed by her and her cousin, such beautiful work. I lent her my canvas top mukluks, they were nice and warm, at least that was good for standing in the snow. I have never seen a photographer work so fast, as Cathy did that afternoon, we didn’t want the girl to freeze.

Shandell is one of the nicest people I know, she is always smiling and laughing, she also brought her beautiful baby girl to the set with her, so guess who got to entertain the baby while they did the shoot. Not that I minded, that is one of the most content and happy little babies I have ever met. We picked the globe for Shandell to represent her current position in the education field, I think it was a great representation of a classroom in nature.

There were a lot of laughs on set with Erika. Aside from the fact that her feet were freezing, in her little spring shoes, she is just a happy person. She posed with the fur to show the connection of land, culture and heritage to her position, which has changed since the photo shoot, she is now the Director of Lands for Vuntut Gwitchin Government.

When we were trying to find something that would represent Billi Jo’s position, we went through a number of different props; an Ipad, the flip chart and we finally settled on the file folders with the funky rabbit fur mitts. Though it may look like it is evening in this photo, it is actually 10 in the morning.

The last two posters were role models, who you would swear have been models for a photographer before, many times. The ultimate professionals, they were ready to go and as we were starting to lose the light of day, it worked out very well.
 

I am still impressed that we managed to get the entire photo shoot done in one day.

Thank you again to all who helped out on this inspiring campaign.