As I have mentioned before, one of the main responsibilities as an intern at Faculty Commons is to take photos at events at City Tech. Last week I got to go to the Brooklyn Museum to photograph a Living Lab event. I was really exciting to get to leave the school to take pictures, especially to go to such interesting venue. I had been to that museum before, but it was very nice to go there as an employee. I arrived before it was open through the back entrance, at 8:45am. Professor Goodlad was the one who invited me to be the photographer, and she was there to welcome me.
The first part of the day was at a conference room on the 5th floor. It was a cloudy day, which means that the light coming into the room through the window was great for photographing. The view from the window was so beautiful, by the way. Since the museum is located right next to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, that window outlooked countless trees and you could see as far as Staten Island.
The event was for faculty from City Tech, around 20 of them. At first, they were all sitting in the conference room and I would go around taking pictures of them. An hour later, we headed to another room in the museum. This time, we got to walk around the public part of the Brooklyn Museum. It was so fun to get to be in the museum around those amazing pieces when no one else other than the rest of the people from the event.
We went to this room which they call “visible storage”. That’s where they keep some of the pieces who are not in show in the museum, but you can still see some of them. We were there for this activity which Matthew, who works for the museum, put together. It was a group play moment where people would go around drawing certain pieces for one minute, then another person would come in an finish that drawing. It’s always fun to see professors in a classroom-type situation, where they’re put in students’ shoes. This particular part of the day required a lot of agility from me, since I had to go around taking as many pictures as possible in a spam of a minute. The room was kind of dark, but thankfully the pictures came out great.
After that, we went to another part of the museum where Matthew told us a bit about the history behind the pieces, which varied from vintage chairs from the XV century to other objects dated back to pre-historic periods. This room also provided a lot of interesting angles and exciting situations where people were looking at the pieces and talking about them.
We then headed back to the conference room for a closing discussion of their day in the museum. Everyone was really nice and only one person had a problem being photographed, which was easy to manage. This experience is really rewarding and I’m glad I was a part of it.
