Photography and film

The following pages provide guidance on our photographic style and subject matter; what to consider when commissioning and selecting photography and film footage; and how to use to the best effect.

Photographic style
Photography should feel natural and real, and reflect boaters and inland waterways we serve. Images should capture people, activities, and our boaters in a safe and positive way.

Details
Detail shots can be useful to help tell a story and add to the narrative, making a piece of communication more visual and engaging.

Nature
Access to nature and blue / green spaces, particularly in urban areas, significantly contributes to improving our health and wellbeing.

We want to encourage people to enjoy these benefits by using and visiting our waterways more often. Images of nature and wildlife can be a helpful way of communicating the positive attributes of our brand and our waterways.

Content
The BSS doesn’t use gratuitous images of boats on fire or burnt-out boats. Our style is to indicate risk areas using an object, installation, or feature closely associated with the risk in close-up in a dynamic bottom-right to top-left position.

The BSS covers many waterways and harbours – giving a wide coverage of vessel types and uses. You should reflect this in any photography used.

Boating is more often than not a safe, relaxing, and very pleasant experience. Again, you should reflect this in imagery.

Brand photography puts people and their safety and enjoyment
of waterways at the heart of
the brand.

We commission it for our image library and to use across our entire organisation.

Subject matter includes the whole range of photography from people and activities to details, nature, and places.

To ensure the best quality on-brand images, always commission a professional photographer for brand photography.

Here’s a selection of some of the most effective and on-brand imagery available from our library.
When selecting imagery, please consider the guidance given over the following sections.
To access our library please contact us through our website
www.boatsafetyscheme.org.

We usually commission event and training photography for a specific campaign or communications piece.

In addition to their original purpose, photography and films may be included in our image library for general use, but only when taken by a professional photographer / film maker.

Professional event and training photography is a great opportunity to capture people, locations, and detail shots with quality and realism.

Budgets, timescales, and other factors may rule out the use of professional photography.

In this situation, consider well-chosen, low-cost, stock photography.

Here are some good examples of on-brand stock photography.

Always check copyright and usage restrictions before buying stock photographs.

Keep images positive

Use ‘real people’

Horizontal applications

Our BSS Curve effectively brings content to life for deeper horizontal applications.

When using an image with enough contrast and clear space, the linear BSS Curve is a good alternative to implement.

Lower thirds

When introducing a subject, you should place their name and any additional information in the BSS Curve to ensure legibility.

Ensure all copy is within the text safe area (5% screen height / width).

Subtitles

Subtitles play an important role in ensuring our film and moving image content is accessible to everyone.

• To achieve this, we’ve developed a simple subtitle style that emphasises content:
• Copy should appear 5% from the bottom edge of the screen.
• Text x-height should be
  approximately 2.5% of the screen height to ensure accessibility.
• For 1920×1080 video, make
  text 54px.
• Line lengths should be a maximum of 68% screen width.
• To avoid obscuring the moving image, don’t include more than
  two lines of copy on screen at one time.