In addition to having the chance to go to the Brooklyn Museum, I also went to Borough Hall to photograph at an event. I had never been there and wow, the court room is absolutely magnificent. I was really impressed with the architecture.

The event was “Places: Art Along the Brooklyn Waterfront Conference” hosted by the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center. It featured many artists who, in some way, work along the Brooklyn waterfront. Some important people spoke there, such as Thomas Finkelpearl, Commissioner, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

I was a little nervous because there were certain specific photos that needed to be taken, such as the Commissioner with other key people at the event. Luckly, I was able to gather them and take the shot.

The event consisted of four different panels with 4/5 people. I had in mind that I had to take pictures of each group as a whole, and also of each person speaking. I had to keep walking around the court room in order to find the best angle of each participant, and try to make the shots look interesting. Hopefully I was able to do so!

One thing that I had to work on was my fear of being too intrusive as I went up front to take close-up shots. This was the first time I had to be so close to my object of focus, but it ended up being okay. After all, those people being photographed were already the center of attention, so they didn’t feel embarrassed or anything.

Not only was it nice to have that different setting to take pictures in, but the conference was very informative. I learned about so many exciting art-related companies that reside near City Tech and events that they host. I’ll definitely be checking them out, especially with the nice weather finally approaching us.

The event went on for a total of 4 hours and I got something close to 300 shots in total. Now my job is to curate which photos are best and edit what needs to be improved. They will be up on the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center website.

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.

The internship is getting busier and busier. Having to design the Tech Day @ City Tech poster and event program was quite the challenge–but a rewarding one. The program was especially challenging because of the large amount of copy I had to deal with in a constraint space. I was given a brief with the information needed for the brochure, and it was a lot; something like 5 Microsoft Word pages.

At first I was trying to figure out which format to go with. There were the options of having a trifold and bifold brochure, and I chose the latter one due to the need of needing extra horizontal space to work with. There were concurrent events and I had to figure out how to make it clear that those sections were going on at the same time in different rooms.

Prof Jordan helped me out so much. We sat and tweaked things for hours until we got a satisfying result. There was so many details that required special attention, such as the correct way of calling professors/doctors, the specific order certain information should appear, and the hierarchy to be used. After Draft #16, we were finally able to have a final version to send out to be printed. Since I work at Faculty Commons, I was able to have a color test print done in less than a day in the basement of the Atrium building. The colors came out great, so I sent out to print 100 copies of the program. That was my first print job done for the internship, and I was really happy with the results.

This week of Feb23-27 was a busy one. I was in charge of designing the poster for Tech Day at City Tech from scratch. The event will feature a big name from CUNY, Dr. George Otte. I was excited to be given the opportunity of designing the poster, since this is the first graphic design project that is not just an update or a simple redo.

Since the event will discuss new ways of implementing more technology in CUNY classes, I decided to try to have a tablet as a part of the layout. It was challenging to make certain words legible enough because of the small point size I was working with, but it worked out well. I did a test with different color schemes to figure out which one would me more appropriate, and ended up choosing a dark-grey background against bright green for titles, and light-grey for the rest of copy. As most graphic design projects, there were a few details that needed to be adjusted to meet the client’s expectations, but mostly regarding copy.

Aside from working on the poster, I also had to photograph two events on Friday that were being held at the same time. One was in N119 and the other was on the sixth floor of the atrium. While I had to miss certain parts of each event, I don’t think it jeopardized the final results.

I found out about this internship opportunity through my classmate Dorian last semester. He told me he was interning at the Faculty Commons at City Tech and how they were looking to hire new people for Spring ’15. Dorian told me I should apply, and I did.

First, I emailed the Faculty Commons team showing my interest in the position. They emailed me back saying I should send them my resume and digital portfolio within a month or so. Then, the application process officially started. They invited in for an interview, and I had to create a physical portfolio for it. That was an interesting experience, since I got to look at previous projects I worked on many years ago.

The interview went well, and a few days later I received an email saying I had been selected to be part of the Faculty Commons team. I’m so glad I got the job! I started the program on January 13th and it has been a great experience so far.