Booth Empire built a custom AI photo booth activation for the Mohawk Students’ Association (MSA) at Mohawk College’s Fennell Campus in Hamilton. Coordinated with Prevail Activations, the two-day experience let students step into one of four custom AI-generated scenes built specifically for the campus audience and the student-life context.
The Campus Brief
The MSA needed a campus activation that would actually pull students in, give them something they would want to share, and feel native to the Mohawk Fennell Campus audience rather than a generic photo booth drop-in. Working with Prevail Activations on coordination, the booking covered a two-hour AI package delivered across the January 14 and 15, 2026 activation window. AI was the right call here rather than a print booth: an AI photo booth turns each guest into the subject of a custom scene, and the output is built for the channels students already live on.
Booth placement was scoped around the realities of running an AI pipeline live on-site. The booth was positioned near venue power and guest Wi-Fi to keep generation, processing, and delivery moving through peak student-traffic windows without stalling.
Four Custom AI Concepts Built for Students
This is the part of the activation that mattered most. Rather than running a single stock transformation, four original AI concepts were developed and each was scoped to a recognizable student-life theme. Every guest got to choose the scene they wanted, and the guest remained clearly recognizable in every transformation, which is the non-negotiable requirement for any AI output meant to be shared.
Concept 1: Let the Hogwarts Sorting Hat Choose My Destiny. A cinematic fantasy portrait of the guest wearing a classic wizard school uniform, standing in a grand enchanted hall with floating candles and glowing stained-glass windows. A magical talking sorting hat rests on their head, glowing runes and sparks floating around it. Dramatic warm lighting, shallow depth of field, rich textures, ultra-detailed, magical realism style. The guest remains clearly recognizable.
Concept 2: College Life in the Upside Down. A dramatic sci-fi portrait of the guest as a college student in an eerie alternate dimension. The environment is dark and otherworldly with floating ash-like particles, twisted vines, glowing red cracks in the air, and flickering lights. The guest wears casual college clothing with a backpack, standing confidently in a surreal upside-down world. Cinematic lighting, moody atmosphere, high contrast, realistic facial detail.
Concept 3: First Day of Class as My Alter-Ego. A high-fashion editorial portrait of a guest on their first day of class, reimagined as their bold alter-ego, featuring an exaggerated, personality-driven outfit that is fashion-forward, edgy, or heroic. The modern classroom background is enriched with dramatic lighting and colorful accents, enhancing the dynamic posture of the subject. The composition should reflect crisp focus and vibrant colors, all captured with studio-quality lighting to create a striking and immersive atmosphere.
Concept 4: Unexpected Spring Break Vacation. A vibrant, cinematic travel portrait of a surprised guest suddenly dropped into an unexpected spring break destination, exuding a relaxed demeanor while dressed in colorful vacation attire. The scene captures a sunny tropical or adventure-style environment, featuring lush palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze, crashing ocean waves, majestic mountains, or iconic city landmarks in the background. The composition is bathed in bright natural lighting, creating a joyful and inviting atmosphere, with ultra-realistic details that evoke the essence of travel photography, all rendered in high quality and rich detail.
Each concept was designed to be instantly readable to a student. The Hogwarts prompt leans into a shared cultural reference; the Upside Down prompt taps into the same demographic’s sci-fi horror reflex; the alter-ego concept lets students perform an aspirational version of themselves on day one of class; the spring break concept speaks directly to the campus calendar’s most-anticipated break. None of these are generic stock prompts - they were written against the audience.
What Students Actually Chose
Across the two-day activation, two of the four concepts - Hogwarts Sorting Hat and College Life in the Upside Down - emerged as the most-used scenes by a clear margin. Both leaned into pop-culture territory that students recognized immediately, which made the choice easy and the output immediately shareable. The recognition factor matters: when a guest instantly understands the reference, they engage with the booth faster and the resulting image lands harder on social than a transformation they have to explain.
The two less-selected concepts still produced strong individual outputs, and having four options on the menu gave the booth range without diluting the experience. Students who didn’t want the popular picks still walked away with a personalized scene they had chosen themselves.
Setup and Throughput
The booking was structured around a two-hour AI package delivered across both January 14 and 15, 2026. The booth was positioned near power and guest Wi-Fi, which kept the AI generation and processing pipeline stable through the peak traffic windows that campus events always generate between classes.
AI activations are throughput-sensitive in a different way than print booths. Every guest needs a few seconds of generation time on top of the capture itself, and the booth has to be placed where bandwidth and power are not the bottleneck. The Fennell Campus placement was scoped around that from the start.
Activation by the Numbers
- 195 AI images processed across the two-day activation
- 4 custom AI concepts built specifically for the student audience
- Two-hour AI package delivered across January 14 and 15, 2026
- Fennell Campus placement near power and guest Wi-Fi
- Most-used concepts: Hogwarts Sorting Hat and College Life in the Upside Down
- Recognizable output preserved in every transformation
Why AI Works for Campus Activations
Student audiences are the hardest group to engage with a generic photo booth. They have cameras in their pockets, they take photos of each other constantly, and a print of themselves standing against a branded backdrop isn’t a novelty. What does land is the chance to be transformed into something they couldn’t produce on their own.
That’s the gap a custom AI photo booth fills on campus. The four MSA concepts weren’t off-the-shelf scenes; they were written for the student-life context, the campus calendar, and the pop-culture references that demographic actually shares. The result was an activation that felt native to Mohawk Fennell rather than a touring photo booth dropped into a student space.
The shareability is the other half of the value. AI output is built for digital distribution, which fits how students already consume and post content. The MSA got an activation that produced visible, on-platform reach after the booth itself was packed up.
Build a Custom AI Activation
Booth Empire builds custom AI photo booth experiences for student unions, colleges, and universities across Canada and the United States. Every activation gets original AI concepts scoped to the audience and the brand - never generic stock prompts. Tell us about your campus event, see more Hamilton activations, or browse the full case study library.
