Lions Park in Clearwater will achieve a bit of notoriety next year.
Last Thursday, the new playground in the park was the location of a photo shoot by Landscape Structures, the company that installed the playground system last fall.
“Basically, we try to capture new parks to educate people and market our playgrounds so they’re available to all children of all abilities,” said Laura Rislund, marketing project manager with the company.
Landscape Structures is a 100% employee-owned company based in Delano.
They’re relatively local to Clearwater, but they sell and install playground equipment all over the country.
“We’ve installed about 100,000 of these,” said Rislund.
A few weeks ago, city staff announced there would be a photo shoot at the park and encouraged people to show up for the event.
Last Thursday, on a warm sunny afternoon, about a dozen parents with their young children assembled at the park to make sure there was lots of activity for the photo shoot. Photographer Joe McDonald went around the playground, taking photographs of kids at play, first individually, then in groups.
At one point he did a countdown and told the kids when he reached “one” everybody start playing.
He didn’t have to. They were already climbing, swinging, crawling and anything else kids do at a playground.
The shoot went on for more than 30 minutes before the photographer felt he had enough for the portfolio.
Rislund said it had already been a busy week for the company.
“We’ve had nine photo shoots alone this week,” she said. “We photograph 60 to 70 a year for the following year’s promotional materials.”
She said the Clearwater Lions’ Park photographs could end up in brochures or a catalog.
“We publish a catalog every year that goes out to all our consumers, including landscape architects and park and rec departments,” she said. “Some pictures end up in marketing brochures and at trade shows.”
They also publish them on their website www.PlayLSI.com.
