Jeff Lautenberger

For our second assignment in Fundamentals of Photojournalism, we had to take 10 portraits of people around Columbia, conduct brief interviews, write detailed captions about each subject and make an 11×17 print of all the images (above). I chose to move farther away from campus and explore areas north of Broadway where I don’t usually go in order to find people that (hopefully) no one else would. One other classmate did encounter Larry later the same day as I so that plan didn’t entirely work.

All portraits were shot with a Nikon 85mm f/1.4 lens on a D700 body and were converted to grayscale. Click here to view a high resolution PDF of the print.

Columbia resident Rory Dunham displays a cell phone and set of car keys while walking down Cherry Street on Tuesday.

The first assignment in my Fundamentals of Photojournalism class was to photograph the contents in the pocket of a random stranger. We had 15 minutes to leave the lab, walk around Columbia, find a subject, and return. The first two people I asked denied my (surely) odd request but I finally found a man walking to his car along Cherry Street. I only snapped two frames, with just a slight variance in exposure. The assignment was to be converted to grayscale which is why it appears so here.

Professor Edwardo Alvarado with his dancing puppets and organ in the Times Square station

See a video by the AP here.

Seriously.

If you’re ever in Times Square and in dire need of novelty prophylactics, this guy’s got you covered. Pitching his wares with slogans such as, “Obama Condoms: For all your hard times” and “Obama Condoms: The ultimate stimulus package,” it was hard not to wait and see anyone would come and buy any. (One person did, after about five minutes.) You can score your own for the ultra-low price of $5 each. For more bad advertising puns, check out their website.