Drama 16 Stage Lighting

2) http://www.nowpublic.com/world/amazing-light-and-sound-tunnel-detroit-metro-airport

3) Unreal

4) I love, love, love the moving sidewalks at airports. They’re fun, they encourage laziness, and sometimes I like to walk on them while they’re moving and pretend I’m superior at walking. (Ok, that bit was stolen from Jim Gaffigan, but I digress)

This is the moving sidewalk at the Detroit Metro Airport, and it looks awesome. Maybe not awesome enough for me to actually go to Detriot, but still pretty cool.

It combines two of my favorite things, not walking and water! The juxtaposition is the best part of the lighting here. You’re in an airport, which is drab and boring and horrible and then you see the wondrous light of the moving sidewalk and suddenly you feel like you’re in one of those cool aquariums, like the one in Atlanta where it’s a tube and the sharks swim over you and you think “Gee, hope this doesn’t break and not only do I drown but a shark feasts on my innards!”

And it seems unreal that in the middle of this airport in Detroit there would be anything even remotely resembling the beauty and grace and splendor of the ocean, but oh look, there is.

At the edge of the picture, you can see the patrons stepping out of the wonderful land of the lighted tunnel back to the florescent world of the “real” part of the airport. Their faces in the picture may be blurry but you can tell how upset they are that they’re leaving that gorgeous, watery light.

Or maybe they’re upset because they have to walk again.

Or because they’re in Detroit.

1) April 26, 2012, 10:30pm, South Side of Campus

2) The street lamps in the misty fog.

3) You can often forget that this is a very pretty campus, as the winter is terrible and lately, after a bout of gorgeous weather, we’re back to the chill and rain.

Tonight, as I was leaving Spring Awakening rehearsal to rush to the Hammer Lab, I was desperately searching for a lighting moment. It was cold, it had rained today, and the last thing I wanted was to be stuck outside looking for pretty lights. I was getting closer to the unispan, and before the steps leading to the ramp were two streetlamps.

The streetlamps are all around campus that it’s easy to forget that they’re there. But tonight, I suppose the bulbs in the surrounding ones had gone out so that these were the only two within my field of vision. The glowing orb around them seemed to grow, because the air was so misty, making the sight look more like a painting than an actual, tangible thing.

I was struck by how pretty it was, and how easy it was to find the lighting moment, once I let it come to me.

It made me realize that this campus is a pretty place to live, even during the dreariest of times.

1. 4/22/12, 3:34, Black Box theater

2. Different colored leds lighting up the fabric of the proscenium for Spring Awakening.

3. The leds were shining through the slats on the proscenium where the fabric was and it looked like fire with the different colors going so fast. It looked like different temperatures and colors of fire and it was really amazing. On the smaller pieces of the proscenium, the way the slats are and the way the fabric is cut, the lights made it look like a ghost ship. With the cerulean and the air blowing the fabric it looked like a broken pirate ship sail in the fog blowing in the wind. It was very ominous.

2. http://www.wunderground.com/wximage/viewsingleimage.html?mode=singleimage&orig_handle=FrozenGord&orig_number=32&handle=FrozenGord&number=32&album_id=10#slideanchor

3. Unreal

4. The light beams shooting to the sky are light reflecting off the ice particles in the air. It looks like aliens are abducting people. It is very creepy and yet I can’t take my eyes off of it. The green color of the light is coming from an aurora in the sky. It also reminds me of the emerald city in the Wizard of Oz. With the green color and the different heights of the beams of light. I find it so amazing that light can do this.

1. Lee Wingfield, NASA

2. Unreal

3. This is a photograph taken of a NASA rocket being shot into the Northern Lights in Finland. The pure lizard green of the notrthern lights against the sky is astonishingly unreal by itself, but the addition of the red streak of rocket creates an image straight out of science fiction.

1. April 26 – 9:00AM – my room

2. Early morning light muted by clouds showing through the blinds on my window

3. My roommate’s alarm had just gone off, and I sleepily woke up and rolled over to make sure she was getting up. In doing so, I saw that the muted light from outside was shining straight into our window per usual, but because the blinds were somewhat open, the room was cast with striped shadows covering every surface the light could touch. As my roommate stepped out of bed, she as well had those horizontal shadows cast on her, and her own shadow stretched across our tiled floor. There was nothing profound about the moment, but rather, it reminded me of waking up at home. Back in Hanover the sun rises directly in front of my house, where my window is located. So each morning, long shadows are cast through my blinds (or straight into the room if I forget to close them the night before). It’s always an early morning wake up call, but it can be peaceful and beautiful at the same time.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/29783161@N05/2836394532/>

THEME:Unreal

I love the look of the sky after a storm.  The cold, grey wash of clouds above is gone and the light begins to stream through again.  The clouds are still there, however, lingering, hanging.  Now they have again taken definition again, just in time to catch the end of a fiery sunset.  Different depths of clouds seem to catch the sun differently.  The white bits at the end glow the hottest, while the grey in the center absorbs a little more.  But that rainbow.  I’ve never seen a rainbow like that (let alone a double rainbow), set in front of clouds the way it is.  Just like the clouds, the rainbow glows with the fire of the setting sun.  In a few more minutes, the sun will set and the storm will move further away.  Until then, the sky continues to burn.

1) 2012-04-21 — 1:00ish PM, At the Temple of Dendur inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

2) Sunlight streaming through the large window illuminating a 2000 year old temple reconstructed inside the museum.

3) Walking through the Met for the first time in my life was an amazing experience.  Travelling through thousands of years of art across every continent, every inch of the planet.  I wandered alone, with no direction, no rhyme or reason to where I was headed or what I wanted to see next.  The light levels changed every time I moved on.  Most rooms were dim, protecting the most valuable prints from fading in harsh light.  The baroque sections were downright dark with deep lacquered panelsand little illumination.  I turned the corner. I don’t even remember where I had been, but right before me stood the last thing I expected—800 tons of sandstone in all its glory.  The window behind seems to be at a slight angle and fills the entire wall.  Pure sunshine filled the room, the stone positively glowing under the light.  The pool surrounding the building reflected some of the light, dancing on the statues that stood guard of the temple.  With no idea this thing even existed, the sudden brightness, the sudden openness, and the simple fact that there was a damn Egyptian building in front of me literally stopped me in my tracks.