The Penn Stater Magazine

Our Hard-Working Photographer

July 24, 2009 at 1:34 pm Tina Hay 1 comment

Look for Clair Poletti on our Everyday People page, probably in the Nov-Dec issue.

One of our favorite photographers for the magazine is Bill Cardoni, who lives in the Poconos, or maybe New York City—I’ve never been clear which—and who doesn’t mind traveling here to do shoots for us. We usually try to come up with two different shoots on the same day to make the trip worth his while. Once in a while—like yesterday—he actually has three assignments in a day. Which is a lot, considering not only the travel time but also how much setup and teardown is involved with each shoot.

Ryan Jones, one of our senior editors, thought it would be fun to show up at yesterday’s shoots and take pictures of Bill taking pictures. So here are a couple of shots for you of Bill in action. The one above is from the first shoot of the day—it’s Clair Poletti, who is in charge of Penn State’s film office and who will be profiled on our Everyday People page in an upcoming issue (most likely November-December). Clair basically is the liaison to anyone who wants to film on campus, whether for a Hollywood movie, a Discovery Channel documentary, or whatever.

Nikki Greene will probably lead off our Sports section in Nov-Dec.

The second photo above is also from the Clair Poletti shoot.

Bill’s next assignment was across campus at the Jordan Center—the subject was Nikki Greene, a highly touted freshman on the Lady Lion basketball team. She’ll be the athlete profile that leads off our Sports section, most likely in the November-December issue.

(The Nikki Greene shoot was taking place at almost exactly the same time that Lady Lion head coach Coquese Washington was giving birth to her new daughter, Rhaiyna.)

Nikki checking Bill's work.

And the third shoot was back here at the alumni center and involved Sascha Skucek ’99, ’07g, whom you’ve probably never heard of, but who is a very interesting guy. He’s a lecturer in the English department who has spent quite a bit of time and energy in the past 10 years or so trying to help solve the murder of Betsy Aardsma, the grad student who was stabbed to death in the stacks in Pattee in November 1969. With the 40th anniversary of Aardsma’s death approaching, we’ve got a feature article in the September-October issue on the subject, and Sascha’s efforts play a big role in that story. He’s in the final photo, below.

Sascha Skucek plays a role in a feature in Sept-Oct, on the ongoing attempts to solve the murder of Betsy Aardsma.

By the way, if you visit Cardoni’s Web site and click on some of the links—like Portrait I, Portrait II, and Print—you’ll see quite a few photos you recognize, from past issues of The Penn Stater, as well as shoots he’s done for Philadelphia Magazine and others.

As always, if you click on any of these photos, you can see a bigger version.

Tina Hay, editor

Entry filed under: The Penn Stater Magazine, University Park. Tags: Betsy Aardsma, Bill Cardoni, Clair Poletti, editorial photography, Nikki Greene, Pattee Library, Philadelphia Magazine, photography, Sascha Skucek.