Week 4 - Tiki Pond Tree

This was taken outside, at a restaurant on top of a hill. . .
The tiki torches lit the different pathways, while the hanging lanterns were decorative wonders. The lights that dropped from the tree branches were all arranged so splendidly. They accented the tree and also reflected in the pond to create a nice, soft, romantic feel. Maybe some fresnels were used?? The lights were glowing but not in an aggressive fluorescent-y way. Maybe some incandescents were used?? :) Anyways, the food was made better by the fabulous atmosphere created by the lighting!! GO LIGHTING!

Hello LEDs!

I've always been very intrigued by string lights. Something about those lights just makes a place look magical to me. The bar of the restaurant where I work just happens to be covered with string lights, so I decided I'd try to capture the environment I get to experience every night at work. To my surprise, the lights are LED and not incandescent. I figured  they would be incandescent because they appear so warm. I wasn't taking into account that LED lighting can range in color. I went on to touch them and they  weren't at all warm. The lights have a color temperature description that reads "warm white".   It's crazy how these changes from our old sources to LED have been happening in so many areas of our everyday lives and a bunch of people like me don't even  realize it. 

PARcore

Couple of PAR cans in the mall?!

week 4 Post for Shin^2

I realize I added 4 photos, but they're all the same thing but with different colors and that's what really drew me to use them was that I took so many different photos but the color changed so often that I felt I could do that. the colors take your breath away at night and they're so vivid and pure that you really con't believe that something like this is man-made. I still find it such a weird concept that water can be colored if water is being shot through it but nonetheless these photos really just awed me and I can't believe I took them!

Creating the Atmosphere

This is a picture I took during our last class meeting, when we were discussing color. Interestingly, a large amount of people posted blogs about sunsets they got a chance to experience. So this is my accidental take on a sunset...indoors. Theatre is meant to reflect and recreate aspects of real human life and experiences, lighting being a huge factor in the aid of suspension of disbelief. Through light, we can create atmospheres, setting and mood, for the world of our plays and their characters. Here we have accidentally created a vivid sunset and we can see our protagonist admiring its immense beauty and warmth. I wonder what's running through his mind...

Barred

This picture was taken around 5-6pm in my bedroom. My window faces the street, and with the blinds half open, this incredible stripes pattern shines through. This picture was particularly striking to me because the bars of light alter the appearance of my face. The right side looks darker in general, with more prominent features; specifically, the darker hues (eyebrow, smudged eye makeup, concave of eye socket) look even darker in contrast with the lightened stripes on the left. I suppose if the lighting on the right was solid, it would create that washed-out look us theatre folk dread so much. But I think this crazy pattern could be useful for very particular designs.

With the stripes as they are, it reminds of noir shots of a detective looking out his window. With the stripes coming from straight above, they would recreate the look of someone hiding under a wooden floor or a metal grated floor. Turned 90 degrees and they resemble a prison cell. I just thought it was so cool that our world is so full of natural gobos! I didn't even have to do anything, this cool design just appeared.

Warmth of a Room

I live in Puerta del Sol, an apartment complex across the street from Albertsons. When I first moved in, one of the first things I noticed was the poor lighting in the bedroom. Innocently, I just assumed it was the light bulb warming up or something like that. However, it never really got better. I then elected to bring a floor lamp into the room to rectify the situation. All of a sudden, it was brighter and homier. 

Jump a couple months into the future, and my roommate moves in for the year; he's a great guy, don't get me wrong. The thing is, he keeps to himself most of the time at his desk and has a desk lamp that he utilizes. The floor lamp is right next to our beds and he's more than welcome to use it to brighten up the room, but he just uses his trusty desk lamp. Now, I'm not in the room that much to really notice anything, but I have these past couple of weeks after talking about lighting. 

The picture above is a shot of my wall on a daily basis in the evening with just the main light of the bedroom (my roommate's desk lamp is not visible in any way). It's a fluorescent light bulb lamp and I just have a lot of problems with this. While green is my preferred color, I'm just not digging this in my sanctuary room where I recover after a day's events. The atmosphere is very dim, cold, and it honestly looks dirty. If I were to try and read in my room, it just wouldn't be conducive to doing so. It honestly makes me tired with how little light there is in the room. 

One night, however, my roommate was out and about and I had the room to myself for a couple of hours. Seeing that floor lamp wasn't going to be bothering anyone and it was right there asking me to use it, I of course turned it on so I could do some reading. The result? Let's just say I was surprised when I keep comparing the two images. 

It's a different room! While of course the upper half is where the star of the lighting resides, it was still incredible how much of a difference that one floor lamp made for the atmosphere of the room. All of a sudden, it was warmer and more inviting. Felt cleaner and more productive (if that makes sense). The floor lamp was, in a sense, washing out the uncomfortable lighting. Now this is a room I want to spend time in! 

As an artist, lighting designers look towards creating a mood through lighting, but can lighting itself change a person's emotional mood at the same? 

Dawn

Probably not the best example of my picture taking skills... But this was my view while driving to school on Monday. On Monday and Wednesday I have class at 8 AM and usually the commute to campus is either too bright so I am unable to see anything, or dark and gloomy making me want to go back to bed. But this day it was pretty cold and crisp and halfway down the 73 I saw this! A small sliver in the clouds where some sunlight was peaking through. I am definitely not a morning person, I'm more of a burrow into a deep dark hole and sleep forever. Extreme bright light isn't what I prefer on most days, but if this was my view I'd never blink. I also really enjoy the hues that are cooler in feeling.

Week 2, lighting in a play area of South Coast Plaza

 I took the picture in South Coast Plaza. It is about a play area inside a food court. The lighting of the whole play area is very dim, so the dim light presents some kind of mystery feeling. However,the lighting of the shooting machines area looks very vivid.  All the lights that have been used are LED lights. There is a horizontal pipe of Led light coming from the ceiling, which lights up the exterior surface of the red shooting machines. Besides, some LED lights also have been installed inside the machines in order to lighted up its interior. Since the background of these red shooting machines is a grayish curtain, the red shooting machines, which have been shed both its exterior and interior, become more vivid. It makes people feel enthusiastic and exciting. Those pick LED light, which shows up the number, stimulate people to shoot faster and faster. All these lights present a very passionate atmosphere.

Post #1

My favorite time to look at the sky has to be around sunset because the sky is always so beautiful with all the different colors. I took these pictures last week on my drive home and everyday that i drive home i am so tempted to take more pictures because the colors are never the same. The colors in the pictures aren't even really the same because I took them a little bit apart but I just think they colors look really great. The way the light is hitting the clouds and you can see a difference in color from the clouds that are closer than to the ones that are farther away really make the picture so nice. Seeing the way light reacts to everything in the air to create those colors is always a sight to see. 

Candle Light

I really enjoy candles in my home and everywhere I go. I think of candles as a great way to capture a specific mood and setting. They are relaxing and pleasurable to your sense of smell and sight. In my apartment, I have candles in just about every room. If they weren't so much of a hazard, I would have my whole house filled with candles to light the place. I would also keep them lit during the night but that could get dangerous. The constant motion of the flame is what I am very drawn to. Incandescent lights are a little more natural when it comes to color, but after a while I feel like a drone when they are kept on for so long. However, candlelight makes me more relaxed and at ease. I love candles in many different scents and as decoration in the house. At my parents house, we have candles all over the place, although sometimes they are not allowed to be lit (which I don't really understand).

Week 2: Rainbow LED Lights

I really love the new rainbow LED lights over in UTC. They remind me of spilled sprinkles and the lights change colors to the music playing over the speakers. They create a lovely ambient atmosphere and in UTC they really add to the hip, trendy, minimalistic vibe they're trying to create to attract more students. I also really like the lights because they remind me of my bedroom.

I love having lights in my room because I feel like they create a really peaceful environment for relaxing and doing work. I'm not a big fan of LEDs for Christmas and other traditional holidays because I don't think such bright, saturated colors have a place in holiday lights. But for everyday room lights I really enjoy them adding a bright pop of color to my otherwise bland, white walls. And I think my white, incandescent twinkle lights do a good job of counter balancing the LEDs. The white lights are stronger so the "base" of my room is lit in white light with only accents of the rainbow LED lights, which in my opinion is better for working in so I can appreciate the vibrance of the LEDs without being overwhelmed by them.

Home

A classic sunset picture. Something that can be so over used and still be shockingly beautiful each time you see it. This year I am living in Newport Beach and am lucky enough to get to see this view every day, as it is the view from my living room. The combination of all the different hues of light in the sky during this particular sunset was simply breath taking. The main thing I appreciate about sunsets is that no matter many times you see one, they constantly remain beautiful and shocking, and this is clearly due to the light. 

One of the best parts of a sunset is its ability to create a mood. I think that if you used this lighting on stage, or even similar hues of pink, blue, orange, and yellow one could create an atmosphere that makes the audience forget where they are. With the brightness of the hues closest to the sun, the other hues seem particularly less bright, and this contrast in brightness in very interesting to view. 

My favorite part of the sunset this night was the reflection of the pink, orange, and blue hues off of the water. As the colors roll with the waves you see all the different shades in different spots of the water depending on which parts of the water are reflecting which colors, and it is constantly changing. Although it is difficult to tell from this picture, this night the pink hue that was reflecting off of the water was actually more saturated than that of the pink in the sky. Although I wonder why this happened I do not question mother nature. It is true when people say that mother nature never makes a mistake, especially when it comes to lighting. 

Shinshin's week 2 post: Darn Pretty sunset

So I have two pictures taken at the same time by the Arc. The first is how the light was affected by me being in the shadows of the arc and the other was me in the backfield without anything to shadow over me. I love them both so much that I included them together. The sunset has always been pretty but that day was spectacular. The light seemed to hit the clouds in a way that made them more white and even darker in some of them. You got to see the lovely golden hue that the sunset sort of washes onto it and you get a lovely contrast of shadows and enlightened objects all at once. It was sort of a majestic paradise. 

Week 1-2 Tavern

Went to get a drink with my brother in Downtown Los Angeles at this place called Villians Tavern this past weekend. The bar had some interesting old looking lights, which complimented the antique theme of the place. I snapped this picture before I ordered some floral berry cocktail and went around the corner to sit in the dimly lit space as a band played some tunes. 

 

Week #1-2, Post #1: Moonlight

I took these pictures in the parking lot of my apartment complex and thought it was super rad how the streetlamp became the dominant source of light in the photo. Originally I whipped out my phone because of the moon’s look. It seemed like the moon was barely peeking through the sky…It reminded me of a scary movie when the clouds close in around the full moon and some werewolf howls. 

I took a close up of the moon as well in case you missed it in the original photo... the hazy streams of clouds surrounding the moon remind me of the Batman signal. Light is awesome.

Week #1 post cable shadow

Saw this at the end of the first class. Thought it looked cool. I'm really into shadow puppetry, and this made me think of a noose.