Cyc

I was walking around Brand park and when I saw the sky turning this amazing color all i could think about was how amazing the cyc is. I mean look at that backdrop color for the lighting. I just had a moment with myself where i thought i was going crazy because i was seeing lighting class everywhere and i just popped out my phone to take a picture of it. This picture and the mood its making and just the time of day thats showing I think is the reason why we use the cyc. Plus its not all the time that we can see this sort of color in the sky. Just once a day I guess. 

Warm lighting

I was at a bar over the weekend and one of my friends commented on how the lighting was hurting their eyes a bit. And I thought how perfect of an opportunity I had to take a picture of the warm lighting that Karyn does not approve of and I really understand why. The light was very orangey and it gave the whole room a really warm look but the place was decorated with a lot of red and there were some red lights too and it just gave the place a really dive bar feel. The lighting did half the work of setting the atmosphere, and I really got excited when I realized how the lighting in the place was really what was setting the whole mood. Thats why us using this sort of lighting, and how my first picturizarion project was lit wasn't a good idea, because this sort of lighting is not meant for us to see everything more clearly. The more I looked around the harder it was for my eyes unless I looked at my friends or the people near me because then the light didn't make everyones face look like an orange blob.

Fog

Here are two pictures of my drive earlier this week in the morning. There was a lot of fog and i just thought the lighting looked so beautiful. You can almost see in the second picture the sun piercing through the fog and making a cone shape with its light. I just that was such an amazing way to diffuse the light, almost like there was a crazy big lens in front of the sun diffusing the light. I wondered about how i would be able to make this sort of light when i saw it because it looked like such an interesting light to make for a scary scene or maybe even it could have been a way to light the last scene in Our Town when everything was a memory. I definitely thought that a fresnel would be perfect for this light if there was some mist on stage then it would definitely be a great.

I had to take a picture of how it looked after the rain to show what I was talking about in my Our Town presentation. The sky has this really wonderful clear quality about that makes it almost okay that its not raining anymore. And the sky has a slight blue tone to it because of how clear everything looks and I just love the color of after it rains. There aren't any vibrant trees, but this is the color that usually makes some of the greens and oranges really pop out, and some of the light colored tree trunks. Im sure you know what I'm talking about, after the rain or in this sort of lighting there are some plants that really pop out because the slight blue tone makes their (usually green, orange-yellow, and almost grey white) colors pop out. I probably always associate the crispness in the air with this sort of color as well, but this has to be my top 3 favorite sort of natural lighting. 

Week 10 Lighting, A film set

Sorry, I am too busy to go out and shoot new photos from the nature in these two weeks. However, I have some pictures from one of my filmmaking set. This is the lighting for a scene when a writer keeps thinking of stories and writing scripts, so he forgets  about the time.  We just used the lamp on the left side of the table, so we can light up his face.  This picture reminds me of the side light and the back light that we kept talking in the class. I feel his right shoulder is a little bit flatten because the scene is lack of back light to lit his shoulder. However, his left side body is very clear to us because the lamp shines from the left side.  Since we cannot see his right side face very clearly, the shadows on his face helps create an image of a tired writer. 

       

Mysterious Lighting

My friend and I took this photo of us walking to the buses from rehearsal earlier in the quarter. At the time I didn't really see anything besides a cool picture of us, but now I understand that part of what making it an interesting picture is the lighting.

This picture is lit by only a streetlight over by Aldrich Hall, and I purposely used my friend's shadow to hide my face because it made it more mysterious, not realizing that is a tevchnique used in lighting. Here the audience is able to connect with my friend more than me, because his face is lit better than my own. But there are also shadows on his face sculpting him and adding mystery to him as well.

On my face however, my face is split directly in half and they are unable to connect with me. This lighting might also be helpful in establishing the personalities of the characters on stage/in this photo.

It's Christmas Season!

It is almost Christmas!! I get excited this holiday season for numerous reasons. However, my favorite part about Christmas are the christmas lights. I enjoy watching how a bunch of little lights turned on at night can make everything glitz and glamour. 

I live on Balboa Island in Newport and I couldn't be more happy to see brilliantly decorated houses every day around this time. There are christmas lights everywhere!! This place is stunning to walk around during the nighttime with a Starbucks latte in hand. 

I snapped a photo of this house because it reminded me of a christmas postcard. The detailing of everything was amazing and the lights showed it all off. I recommend anyone and everyone to come visit and see these stunning designs. Soon, not only will the house be decorated but also the boats. :o !!

-A

Cloudy Skies

My last lighting blog! I have to say I was extremely excited to take this class. As a dancer and performer I have been performing onstage basically my entire life, but even though dancing is what I've focused on and always wanted to do I have also always wanted to learn more about the lighting aspect. There is so much that goes into lighting it is amazing, and after taking this class I have a whole new appreciation for lighting and a massive amount of respect for lighting designers. So without further ado, here's my last light blog:

I took this picture while walking to UTC from the Arts area. What really caught my attention was the clouds in the sky. You can't really tell in this picture, but the clouds were so intensely defined in the sky it was almost scary. I felt like if I were close enough to them I could actually physically touch them. It looked like the light in the sky was coming from these clouds since the sun wasn't where I was looking while taking this picture.

Again another driving picture... I really should stop doing that. This was taken on my favorite part of the drive down to my hometown in Carlsbad. Usually the sky is pretty clear but there's always a light, whether dim or bright, shining onto the water. But today it was so picturesque! The clouds were so completely beautiful, it looked like a huge fluffy cotton ball was pulled apart and strewn across the sky in front of me. And that small little patch of light shining down seems so divine and powerful yet peaceful.

Christmas

These were Christmas lights that were in my friend’s apartment. I was inspired by the bright colors of these led lights. I think that before this class I had a fear of color with regard to lighting. Last year for my dance piece in the Bare Bones show I remember being very hesitant to use color and finally went with a grey blue and grey violet for a few parts. This quarter has made me less afraid of using color and that is why I chose this picture this week. 

The bright colors that are electrifying create a fun atmosphere and are exciting and stimulating to look at. I also really enjoyed the reflection of light onto the white wall. The white wall absorbed the light to make the shine of the light extend around the lamp itself. The ridges in the lens created a texture on the wall that was interesting to look at, rather than a simple line. 

Bonus blog: what I WISH I could have done for my final

Ironically enough, I took this picture the exact night of the day I present my final "Our Town" cues. I think I literally grumbled out loud out of frustration when I noticed the sky that night. The purple hues didn't photograph as nicely as it looked from my own eyes, but the gradient effect shown here was also stunning in the sky. I really like how the trees seem to glow in the moonlight, but it's probably also with the help of a streetlamp nearby. I wish I had knew the techniques used to create this specific type of night sky. I've seen something similar to this idea used recently in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and it was beautiful then too. It wasn't as gradient, but I think that's because in the time setting of that play, there probably isn't as much light pollution as is prevalent in this picture.

Week 10: real life street lamps

Believe it or not, this row of cars was mostly white and silver paint jobs! Walking out to my car at about 10pm, I was struck by how ugly this street lamp made them look! This dingy yellow color showed up on my skin too (although it didn't photograph as well as the cars). When I saw this I was like "I'm gonna put a pin in this if I ever have to light using a street lamp as my source". I would probably use a saturate amber with a yellowish tint to it, and use a fresnel to get a clean wash (NOT a tonal, like I recently attempted... see I'm learning!).

Week 8 blog: Mood lighting

This picture was taken at a club called "School Night" (aptly named, since it's only held on Mondays) at the venue Bardot in Hollywood. This is not my usual scene, but my best friend (who is also my polar opposite) loves this place. It has this very hipster vibe: all the people there either had an asymmetrical haircut, dreads, or some fashionable but appears-to-be-low-effort hat on. My friend describes the music threy play as "ambient gay disco", and its a perfect depiction. No one really danced (as you can see by this empty dance floor) but people just kind of stood around and mingled while kind of nodding their heads to the beat and sipping their "mature drinks" (wine and whiskey gingers, not my thing). It was such a low-key environment that I had the time and train of thought to admire the lighting here. Not only do the fixtures themselves match the interior theme of this place, but the warm lighting created this cool sepia tone on everyone, as if we were in a real-life Instagram filter. Keeping it dim, but still at a certain visibility level, created a comfortable environment with a safe and calm vibe. This as opposed to the usual clubs I go to-- with their bright neon lights and fast paced strobes that create a disorienting feeling match the vibe my kinds of clubs go for. Even though it wasn't my favorite club, I had to applaud them for using lighting to further enhance the mood they were going for. Well done, hipster club owners. 

Week 10 - Sunshiney Day

Midday sunshine at the beach...so great?! The clouds were all wispy and spread out across the sky, making the sun's rays appear as though they were reaching everywhere. The cliffs create these shadows on the water that give a nice silhouette to the rocks/jetty thing downcenter . The way the sunlight is hitting the rocks gives it a definition that makes me feel like I'm moving forward. The lit rocks surrounded by shadows seem to me to want to move toward the expansive and bright skyline. It gives a feeling of openness, of hope and of a brighter future. Definitely a hero-who's-just-conquered-something type of scene. Or maybe a Scarlett O'Hara after-all-tomorrow-is-another-day type scene? Anyways...natural light with no filter gave me this wonderful, beauteous picture. It's amazing how much light makes a difference with feelings and emotions.  If the sky was grey with not a lot of sunshine, my whole hero and/or Scarlett O'Hara scenario wouldn't work. The whole situation would change...Sunlight. YAH!

Brightness and Shapes and Stuff

This picture is really brightwashed because it was so luminous this day, but it's not altogether too far from what it actually looked like. I snapped this one because it was almost entirely different from the other "horizon-from-parking-garage" picture I uploaded. Here, all the light waves are blended near seamlessly into a pure original-looking glow. The intensity of the light is too much for me to make out anything behind it, but the trees and garage and car, which are in front of it, are cut out clearly. Makes me think about backlighting and frontlighting and all that directional magic. Lighting designers can be so selective about what the audience actually gets to see, because they control the element that allows them to see. AND the takeaway from this picture is that LDs can take away certain parts of our vision both by lowering AND by increasing the intensity. Light can both illuminate and shroud, depending very much on the intensity that it hits our eyes, and what blocks or bounces it. This inspires me even more to play with shadows.

HeliosViaAuto

I know what you're thinking. Ryan, this is just a bright-ass picture of the sun on a sunny day, what's so special about that? Well let me wax philosophical for a moment and I'll tell you (it's been an existential day, I'm sorry). THE SUN. WHO LIGHTS OUR EARTH. The reason we can see. We've never really seen it. We see its effects, and we see it peripherally, but we cannot look directly at the thing itself without it taking away our sense which perceives its effects. Kind of like how art operates sometimes. Showing us bits and pieces of a thing through metaphors and symbols, leading us to make our own conclusions about the world and how it works. Sparking our imaginations and suspending our sense of disbelief. Perhaps this is why it is so hard for many people to watch pure naturalism, or certain theatre of cruelty, Brechtian, 4th-wall-shattering productions. They aim to make us look at the actual thing in front of us. They remind us we are here in a theatre, or that we are in a world that is not as ideal or dramatic as we would like. Sometimes they get really close to achieving their goal. But is it possible for this art to really show us what is there at the heart of it all, what the essence of a thing is? Probably not, but we aren't going to stop trying anytime soon.

Creative Lighting Design in Non-Artistic Settings

This is a light in a restaurant that ShinShin took me to a few weeks ago. It caught my eye. I wasn't enthralled by it, I don't think it's immensely beautiful, or ingenious. I don't even know if it's making me feel comfortable eating here. But it did make me think about the role of lighting designers outside of theatre. Someone designed this. They had a purpose in designing it, a desired effect. And they sold it, or were hired by a business to make it a reality. There is an entirely different sort of art at work here than we have been focusing on. Some of us might not even have experienced the idea of a lighting designer before, or outside of theater. That makes me wonder if there are people around studying how to design lights that have no idea about their function in the theater. It's a nice feeling to know that you are connected to artists in other places in the world, in other businesses, doing things for completely different reasons than you are, but still using their brains and guts to create a thing to do a thing and get another thing. Artists are at work in everything, and artists are all around us, not just in the arts department of the college. I think this college has thousands more artists than many of us might bother to think about regularly.

Fishtank LED

This is a picture of my roommate's salt water fishtank with it's night light on. It's kind of incredible all the things that are going on here. When you look at it at first, it's just kind of blinding to the naked eye. But if you focus on it for a minute, your eye adjusts, and begins constantly readjusting to comprehend the huge range or light this little thing is outputting. It gives a general white with blue coloration to the room, but when you really inspect the color and where you can see the different lengths of light waves clash, you see there is much more than white and blue. It's great to look at it in person and then with a camera rendition too, because the camera can't view this as in depth as I can, so it has to make up for some of the light it can't get with what it thinks the color is there. It really makes it apparent all the different hues going into this light. Thus we get purples, pinks, oranges, some greens, even a little brown. I think it's a great idea to approach picking a color by deciding what general feel of color you want (here it would be, blue and white, or blinding light blue) and then really looking at what object or setting has that light mood that you are looking for and inspecting the colors that aren't apparent. If I think about moonlight, my first reaction is blue, or pale white. But if I really look at moonlight in the real world or in artist renditions of it, I see that there is a lot around the edges that is combining to make that specific tint. Color mixing has been really on my mind lately.

My Little Tree

So I thought it was cool how just a little cut of light, probably framed by part of a building, got through and was then cut out again by this tree to make some interesting gobo-esque shapes on the wall.

If this was a light, the sun would be the lamp, the building would be the shutter and the tree a gobo I think. It's interesting the way we reexamine normal every day things that we take for granted in terms of class concepts. I just love taking something so common and accepted as sunlight and breaking it down, and transforming it into a million different metaphors and explanations and comparisons. I think that re-examining mindset is crucial to all art.

This also makes me think about source, and how something similar to this could be a clear indication of where the sun is in the sky, what is blocking it and therefore, what our setting, time of day, and even time of year are. Just this small bit of light hitting a wall, so simple, so much information conveyed without even speaking words.

Dec. 7 - Brownness at the edges of day - Autumnal

I think I may be behind on blog posts, but I've been saving up pictures to blog about all quarter, so prepare for an influx of posts from me. I took this picture from the Mesa parking structure because the clear lines of color melding and difference of color on the horizon vs the sky reminded me of the Cyc (cyke? Sike? Psych? Psion?). I'm starting to put together how lighting in theatre really works suggestively. We may never see an exact representation of the light of any outside event or location replicated in the theatre. But we can use our color pallet and intensities to suggest heavily toward times, places, and the way that nature makes us feel. I've had some hesitancy about using the cyc recently because it just reminds me so much that I'm in a theater and not in the actual place I am trying to suggest through my lighting, but I am also starting to realize that the suspension of disbelief takes us far, and that realism is achievable without things being perfectly replicated. Slowly putting the pieces together. Go me.

Subdued Horror

This past weekend has been full of emotional turmoil and stress with a lot of things transpiring. Fittingly, after returning to my brother's house from our trip to Las Vegas, it was raining pretty hard in the Valley (hard for California, surely). The entire day of Sunday felt like time was at a standstill with nothing letting up - the rain was continuous and would get harder sporadically. The most important thing of note was the constant state of lighting - grossness.

While this picture isn't as representative as it could/should be, I hope the point still gets across. There's always something about this kind of lighting that makes me really uncomfortable. You're inside and you think it's just going to be a gloomy day; sweater weather but easy on the eyes. But then you're just all sorts of wrong when you step out. Instead, it's not as cool as you like but it's also oddly bright. The sun is definitely being covered by the menagerie of clouds, yet the brightness is deceiving. It still somehow manages to pierce your eyes and cause a lot of pressure. It's just completely subduing everything you, yet the brightness is curiously more painful than if the sun is shining directly in your face (possibly an exaggeration).

On a day like this, I always seem to get a strange kind of foreboding. An omen of sorts. I never know what exactly is going to happen, but I can expect something uncomfortable to happen.



Or I'm just crazy and dramatic. It's all the same to me really.

Ombre !

This week I spent quality time with my best friend--Joan Padeo. We had a lot to catch up on and talked up a storm over a few Black Velvets at BJs. As I sat across from Joan, I took out my phone and captured  a photo of my newly-found favorite drink. The flash reflected nicely off the glasses and highlighted the beautiful berry ombre that occurs when the cider and stout mix.
I also couldn't help notice the ombre within the picture itself. The flash allowed the light to bounce of the table, making the bottom of the picture very bright.
It was nice seeing my best friend and catching her behind the brightness of the drinks. I took a few photos before liking this one, and without flash the picture was uninteresting. The light from the flash at the angle it was taken captured the essence of the drink and a good time spent with an awesome person!