Last week I was at the College of Wooster in northern Ohio, a small liberal arts school with a green, tree filled campus. This week I am at New Jersey Institute of Technology, in the heart of concrete Newark. Next week I photograph at Yeshiva University on upper Manhatten. I don’t think I could be visiting three more distinctly different institutions (though there’s a Catholic womens college that might get added to the mix before I’m done).
NJIT is actually a very cool place. The scheduling of photography is, compared to the breakneck and lengthy days at Wooster, sedate and civilized. They have, in the past, used photographers who bring cases of lights and assistants and take three hours to construct a shot. I use available light (or, at most, the two Canon Speedlites in my bag), and I’m done in 15 minutes. And my shots look real.
There is no majority ethnic or racial population at NJIT. It’s all mixed up—a table on the outdoor courtyard might have sitting at it a hajib covered Muslim woman with an African American man and a couple of white guys, a blonde American woman, and a south Asian guy. Social groups are a function of major, not ethnic or racial identity. It reflects the demographic of northern New Jersey, and it is a harbinger for the future of our country. From this vantage point, the future looks pretty good. It seems to be, for a tech school, a pretty social place with kids hanging out together, and it’s been easy to get friendly groups of students for photographs in situations that aren’t contrived.
My favorite situation today—shooting in the Clean Room (see the Daily). These are the kind of places where integrated circuits are made by moon-suited technicians. NJIT has one of the few such rooms in the world in a college environment. I became a moonman, and shot inside the place. How in the world would I ever have had such an experience if not for my profession.
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