Drama 16 Stage Lighting

DATE-TIME-LOCATION: February 3rd, around 7pm, an Avenue in New York City

OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: Walking down the street alone, I noticed a rapidly changing light source in front of me, and looked up to see a “ticker” (actually 2) that ran in a loop from high up on the side of a building down to the sidewalk and about halfway from the edge of the building to the street.  It was covered by a thick glass, and the words that ran around shone blue.

SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: My initial reaction was that it was ridiculous for someone to have bothered paying whatever large sum it had certainly cost to install this light board, that couldn’t even be easily read, into a New York City sidewalk.  I tried to figure out what it was saying, but the words closest to me were upside-down and my eyes couldn’t adjust to the moving lights quickly enough to see what was said. I was annoyed that this flashy display was in my way; if it wasn’t telling me something very important, it was just frivolous.  The ground lights of the loop were directly in my path, however, and so I ended up walking directly on top of the short end of the rectangular loop. As I walked over, I couldn’t help but look down, and the moving lights made me almost dizzy, but not quite.  It was a sensation that I had never experienced, and can’t quite describe. It was almost like entering a different reality, where the ground doesn’t behave in the way that ours does. I guess the most accurate description of the way that it made me feel was confused. I was somewhere between reality and this light world, and I couldn’t choose which I would rather be a part of.

Photo by Derrick Tyson – http://www.flickr.com/photos/derricksphotos/189815067/

Theme: Shadow

Description:  We all seem to shelter secrets. Whether we do it out of embarrassment or pride, secrets exist to hide or repress certain memories. Some secrets can even make us go insane, eating at our insides until nothing is left. There is a secret pain in this picture. The man hides in the shadows, scared to face his secrets but bits of it fall out of the shadow into sight. Shadow has a useful ability of hiding the things that we don’t want seen by others. Shadow however, can be manipulated by light, just as secrets can be manipulated by truth. The man seems to be in pain, afraid of his secrets, maybe his past, coming out. He pulls his face down and into the shadow for a reason. I can feel inner agony, leaking off his face. The light is cast from the ground and casts a shadow created from his nose and hands over most of his face. We can make out his eyes, mouth, hands, and a portion of his nose. Not too much skin is shown, keeping his face and identity a mystery. He is hiding something. But what is it? Well, that’s a secret!

1) February 16th, maybe 4 in the morning?, Uncle’s house in Miami, Florida

2) I was sleeping at my uncle’s house and I left the television on. The television woke me up and reflected into a sectional picture frame on the wall, perpendicular to the bed. It broke the television picture into symmetrical boxes in the picture frame.

3) I have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. I toss and turn, inevitably starting a war with my bouncing mind and imagination. As the television woke me up, I stayed still and looked at the wall ( I lay on my right side). There was a huge picture frame made up of many family photos, like a collage. I tried to find a picture of me or my sisters and observed the frame. The home shopping network was on and Wendy Williams was trying to sell her new necklace collection. The television reflected off of the photos, making it impossible to see what the original photo was and creating a focus onto Wendy Williams. All I could think about was “I don’t remember watching the home shopping network before I fell asleep”. I tried to recollect the events that lead to me passing out on the bed. With my mind blocked, I stared at the reflection of Wendy Williams and her extremely gaudy necklaces for 5 easy payments of $28.99. I felt like it was a mind blowing experience to be watching a reflection of the television and how it broke up into symmetrical squares. It was a different way to look at something that I became so accustomed to. I fell back asleep and woke up in the morning with the television turned off and that feeling where you try to distinguish what was a dream. I was a little dazed, but it was not a dream. I need to stop drinking coffee right before I go to bed.

1. Friday Febuary 17, 2012, 3.00 AM, Leaving Lowe

2. Through a light rain, a yellow fixture on the side of one of the campus buildings shines through the branches of a tree behind the fog of Phil’s breath.

3. Around 3.00 AM, my dry contacts start to make the world around me go hazy. Walking out of Lowe my eyes were blinded by the temperature change, the light change and the sudden rain on my eyelashes. In front of me, phil took his first breath in the cool night air, exhaling a breath of fog that was illuminated by a yellow hued light from a building across the quad, when this fog cleared, I saw that the light was appearing from behind a tree, sparking with the raindrops on its surface. such an image was a perfect picture of that time between winter and spring, when the world can’t quite decide who to be. The cold of Phil’s breath was excellently Feburary, while the warm light through the rain was exactly April. Such a light is hope in the darkness, that life and spring will come again. That even when your breath is visible and your eyes are too tired to see, beauty can be found in the most unexpected of places

1) Wednesday February 15, 2012 – 6:00 pm – NAB

2) My lighting moment occurred while I was walking up the stairs in the nab to the second floor to get to the Blackbox Theatre. Because the lighting in the second floor is many rows of cans that each send a beam of light out in every direction, each step was casting about three shadows on the step underneath it. This gave an effect of four greys, each ligher than the previous one.

3)This was a really awesome effect that I was able to notice because of my incapableness of looking up while walking up or down stairs. The top of the stairs looked like on of those strips from the Home Depot with four different color choices, in this case your choices are steel grey, dark steel grey, darker steel grey, and darkest steel grey. I really liked how the shadows looked like steps especially when they were casted in a step.

1. Wednesday Feb 16th 11:00pm Leaving campus from the Oak Street South side of campus, across from the lions with a white back ground

2. The two lions are back lit with 2 outdoor type lights pointed directly at the words and not the sculptures. The light is pointed up so is splashing off of the white background to hit the letters of “Hofstra University” from below. This fully illuminates the sign for those driving by.

3. Though this light is all about the sign into Hofstra it was the shadows on the sculptures in front of that which I found interesting. We all know there is only so much you can do to a sculpture in order to make it look real and as far as lions in Hempstead we are pretty good judges. The quality of this light was that it was coming up from the slightly wet ground to have a charged beam of light to bounce off the white backdrop to the lions. These lions are in no way believable in getting up and coming after you. This light gave them just enough light from behind to be distinguished but not so much as to see any of the carving details, but you can see the overall shape. So without any light our eyes start filling in the blanks for us when we need it and play tricks to show something moving when it is still. It gives them the ominous presence in which to be a mystery and to cox them into their ground. So despite sculpture  trying to welcome students at night because the words are more important, we may just be scaring children on their way by.

2) Saturns moon Rhea, taken by the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 8, 2010

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12696

3)Photo Theme: Shadows

4) This is a photograph of Rhea, one of Saturns moons and it’s rings. This photo fits the theme of the week because it the shadows, not only give the items definition, but it’s the reason we see the items in the photo. Because of the shadows being created by the sun shining on saturn, we may notice each crater on Rhea, and we can tell that it’s not a circe, but a ball because of the definition that the shadows are creating. Since we are looking at the rings, almost straight on, the background is a well lit “backdrop” created by Saturns brightly lit atmosphere, nicely  decorated with strokes of shadow from the rings.

2. http://www.smashinglists.com/25-marvelously-captured-shadows/

3.Shadows

4. This is a photo with a lot of ambient light that creates the right conditions for this shadow to happen. Judging by the bright light and green surrounding the shadow I would assume its spring time as things are blossoming. Many may look at this eight-legged shadow coming down on them as menacing but I think the spider fits right into the world of spring. The fuzzy outline and clearly portioned spider indicates that the source is directly above to object and probably far away. This shadow has some movement to it. It suggests that the spider is either coming or going from that spot on the leaf and this shadow is simply the impression he is leaving.

A photo I took at the abandoned LA Zoo in Griffith Park, Los Angeles< CA

THEME: Shadows

Visiting this abandoned zoo was the creepiest, most surreal experiences I’ve had a chance to document and photograph.  The original zoo was opened in 1918, and most of the buildings we visited were build as WPA projects in the 30s.  Closed in the 1960s and rebuilt at another site, the original site was eventually converted into a picnic area with cages and buildings left to crawl around in.

While we were never sure quite what lived in the cages, the standard setup was a public “viewing” pen below, and a staircase leading up to cages and beds behind.  I came to the top of the stairs and turned the corner to be hit by this sight.  All traces of life there were gone, only steel bars and Guillotine doors, concrete and brick—all covered in graffiti.  Light poured through the cage door and the stairs at the other end of the hall.  The bars on the “kennel” broke the sunlight across the floor.  Most places the cage doors on the outer walls were bolted shut, but with this one open, natural light illuminated up the cold and forgotten home that was once a reality for the zoo’s residents day in and day out.  There is no warmth in this place, even the sunlight that makes it in is dull and greyed.