A Polaroid, a potato and a portrait

My colleague Maggie Spear and I interviewed and photographed some of the recently arrived BRown first-year students about a treasured object they brought with them from home to college. Find Maggie’s story on news.brown.edu

Ailyn Mendoza - Preschool Portrait

“As I’m transitioning into college and discovering who I am and who I want to become, I want to remind myself that she’s always with me. That little girl is still a part of me, and same for all of my other phases. Looking at this photograph is a nice reminder of that, and it helps ground me, especially when things are bit overwhelming.” 

Jacob Garcia - Flag of Hawaii

“It’s kind of like bringing my home to Brown. This flag, especially to the locals and native Hawaiians, means a lot. From an outside perspective, it might just seem like a state flag, but this is actually the flag of the sovereign native Hawaiian kingdom way back from before the overthrow. It affirms where I come from and what kind of people I’m from. Every time I look at the flag, it brings me back home, so I’m not too homesick.”

Jeanus-Luc Canlapan - Mom’s Polaroid

“My mom loves to take pictures, and I guess it’s something I inherited. She let me take the Polaroid basically everywhere I went over the summer, and I captured a lot of fun, silly and heartwarming memories with my friends and family. In my dorm, I have several of those Polaroids hung up on display, and they make me appreciate and never forget the experiences that I’ve had back home. In a sense, they’re always with me — I can just look into a picture and immerse myself in that memory.”

Thomas Politano - Prized Violin

“I’ve always had a very special love for classical music since I was very young, and I played the viola for a long time. When I started to play violin, I realized there was such a greater repertoire of music available for me to play. And I realized at that point that I played these instruments — not for the competition, for the resume — but just because I just love the music. … This violin is actually my music teacher’s. It’s such a gift to bring it to school, especially with this connection that it was made over a hundred years ago in the town that I grew up in. It’s very special to me.”

Tijesuni Ademuwagun - “Positive Potato”

“My teacher crocheted these little ‘positive potatoes’ and handed them out to everyone in class on the day of our AP calculus exam, which was the most stressful thing of my life. But whenever I felt like stuff was building up and I couldn’t handle it, I just squeezed him, and it felt like everything was going to be OK. When I got here and realized I didn’t have the OG crocheted potato, I was like ‘I need one, quick!’ and ordered this one … technically, it’s an octopus. But he looks like my potato.”

Fuji Fun

Pigeon flies by the docks

The prison records, correspondence and artwork of Mumia Abu-Jamal anchor collection at John Hay

Had the privilege to make some images of Pembroke archivists Mary Murphy, Amanda Knox and N’Kosi Oates working with a collection of works belonging to or related to prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Among the materials acquired by the Hay Library is a thick, heavy pair of glasses that Mumia Abu-Jamal famously wore for many years.

Cotton Candy

Though it’s older, the Phantom 4 Pro still puts out some decent images. I’ve also been exploring some of the intelligent flight modes. The time-lapse below is tripod mode. It needed a little stabilizing, but it was better than I expected it to be.

Volleyball Pep Rally

Defensive specialist Victoria Vo, in brown, celebrates with the rest of the Brown Bears after a point against URI during the pep rally game.

I don’t shoot much sports anymore, but it is nice to flex the muscle every once in a while. It’s really nice shooting sports at Brown. Division 1 athletes, but not nearly as tight or restrictive court environment as it was shooting at schools with larger athletics programs.

Allen Dufort

As a software engineer intern, Allen Dufort is supporting a Brown physicist’s NASA-funded project to help build a telescope that will enable the study of distant planets.

In July, as the world marveled at the first images of the Cosmic Cliffs and previously invisible areas of star birth revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope, Allen Dufort felt excited that he’d soon make his own contributions to space exploration.

As a software engineer intern for Brown University Professor of Physics Gregory Tucker, Dufort has spent Summer 2022 writing computer code for components of a telescope that a team from Brown is helping to build, thanks to a grant from NASA.

Storm's a-comin'

I can see my house from here!

Storm front moving in over the Seekonk River into East Providence.

BioBlitz, East Bay Bike Path

Drone-y Baloney

A student walks by the Van Wickle Gates in the late afternoon sunshine.

After getting my Part 107 to fly for work, I’ve really been enjoying finding fun new vantages to see PVD from.

Choreorobotics 0101

This year Sydney Skybetter lead a class where students explored the ideas of humanizing robots in a world where companies and governments are rapidly increasing the way humans interact with robots and artificial intellegence.

My colleague Jill Kimball wrote a wonderful article about the Choreorobotics 0101 course for Brown’s news site.

The course split their time in the studio learning about intentional communication through movement and then taking those lessons and other materials into the robotics lab to program Boston Dynamics Spot robots to do choreographed dances to music.