Drama 16 Stage Lighting

2) This photo was taken by flickr user Cilest on November 27th, 2004. http://www.flickr.com/photos/cilest/1731192/

3) Theme: Night Life

4) At first, it seemed that a picture of night life should represent the partying that happens at night- bright lights, colors, and lots of motion. To me, this is a more everyday night life. The city is always alive at night, but not every day is the day you go out to party with friends. The lights in this picture show the feeling of being alive and awake late at night, on a typical day. The way the light disperses off the sign on the building makes the light feel more subdued. It is sleepy and not overly energetic, but it is still alive and shining. This feeling continues into the way the lights are reflected in the rainy street. Night life, every day night life, is tired, but still bright, and there is something so comforting but exciting about that.

1) 4/26/12 – 12:34 – Walking from Lowe to Netherlands. Just outside of Bits under the trees.

2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was walking to my room from Lowe one night recently. It was pouring rain and the trees were dripping wet. I looked up at the tree above me and there weren’t that many leaves on the tree. The light was shining through each droplet and being magnified off of each branch.

3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was wondering back to my room after rehearsal one night. Unfortunately it began to rain heavily just before I started walking home and had to simply accept that I was going to be getting soaked. I strolled down the sidewalk outside of bits and looked up at one of the trees outside of memorial. The leaves were just beginning to pop out of their buds on the branches of the tree and the branches were still somewhat naked. The water began to collect on the bottom of al of the little branches and the wood on the tree was soaked to an extremely dark brown. The sky was somewhat of a glowing gray due to all of the reflection from the city lights down below. As I studied the tree branches I began to notice the droplets almost seemed to be capturing all of the ambient light that was surrounding me.

The safety lights that were shining from the top of Hauser Hall were casting down and each water droplet was acting as a tiny magnifying glass for the light. The tree actually reminded me of seeing a tree near christmas being illuminated with decorative lights. Each droplet acted as its own naturally occurring christmas light. Because the water was continuing to fall as I studied the tree, the lights seemed to twinkle as they fell. Studying each branch up close, I could see a repeated bugs eye view of the surrounding area in each droplet. When I took a step out of the moment and looked at the tree as a whole it was a beautiful glowing gold color that was absolutely gorgeous. What truly struck me about this moment walking home is that I could actually see that there was a moment where natural and organic elements such as rain, and a bear naked tree combined together in such a way that made the natural and organic look man made and flashy.

1. Wednesday April 25th 6pm NAB in the scene shop

2. Sunlight outside seen through the shop door

3. This moment caught all of us working in the shop off guard. As we are running about with lights and set pieces, I walked  into the shop to get steps and the garage door was open letting the breeze in. I just glanced at the door registering that it was open but the bright clarity made me stop. The day had been bright but the clouds were rolling in and ready to burst at any time. The reason it was so bright was because it was sun showering. The rain drops were enhancing the sunlight to become mesmerizing. It was only a sliver but that brightness in the corner was just what was needed for a busy afternoon in a dark theater. Its been seen before and its simple and not that uncommon but that’s what made it so mystifying. The view from the garage door is by no means a pretty one, it looks at Weed hall and the houses before hitting the turnpike but suddenly there was a filter between that drudgery and myself. Its always nice to find those little crystals during a long hard day and this lighting moment provided that uplift.

22 April, 2012
Harlem, NY
Around  9:30 pm

En route to Penn Station on a double decker Megabus, I sit in the front of the second story with a full view of the entire road in front of us. We’re driving south through Harlem on a rainy night. With the height of the bus, my view is just below that of the street lamps and signals. The streets are shiny with the rain, reflecting the amber of the street lamps visible through the trees with dripping branches.

The streets are dark and shiny with the rain, and the little amber blotches disappear underneath the bus as we whiz through the Harlem streets, black with the night. The dark of the night and streets and rain want to encroach upon us, but we’re moving so fast that we leave it in the dust, speeding steadily towards the next light. We’re never caught in the dark for too long, it’s never too far until the next street lamp, and we’re getting closer and closer to the perpetual brightness of further downtown. Everything is fast and close the way a chase scene in a movie comes across, all breakneck and jerky with spastic movement. But we always catch up to the next patch of reflected street lamp, even if we can’t see it through the trees.

2) Photo taken by Nic Christopher. Taken at lookout point near Blasket Islands on Dingle Peninsula on April 15 at around 3:20 PM.

3) THEME: Unreal

4) DESCRIPTION: This picture was taken while on a hike overlooking the Blasket Islands while I was with my family touring the Dingle Peninsula. Yes this is taken from a similar area as last week’s photo however I think that this photo and the lighting employed in this photo are fantastic. I think that the lighting of this photo is spectacular and almost makes the photo become something more of a photoshopped background or a dream than an actual photo. I other that raising the contrast of this photo I did not do anything in terms of post production to this photograph.

When I tried to think of something UNREAL, the first ideas that came to mind were abstract images or pictures of fire or stunning sunsets. What I realized is that those things are not unreal in terms of lighting. What is unreal is when the lighting can play tricks on someones perception and when lighting can offer a grand contrast in an area that already seems somewhat dream like. The first thing that I liked in this photo was the Rainbow. I think that a rainbow is simply unreal. It is always there and appears to be a tangible thing, however it can never be touched or reached. Rainbows are also stunningly beautiful and extremely colorful. The other element of lighting that makes this image seem so unreal is the contrast between where the sun is shining and where the rain is falling. With the panorama shot, you are able to see that there is a small squall hitting one part of the farm land while the sun is beating down in the background. It juxtaposes a scary and strong storm onto a beautiful and bright scene of a green and luscious hillside.

Standing on the mountain looking out on this land seems to give me a feeling of being king of the land. Watching the elements interact with the land and the animals. All of the contrast is blended with the illusion of the rainbow and it just makes me wonder if this place is really an actual place.

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THEME: Spring!

One of the biggest signs of spring for me is the smells. Washington is covered with floral life, flowers and trees and greenery, oh my! So when spring rolls around there is an abundance of fragrances from the various flowers in the area. Spring also brings with it Seattle’s ever-present precipitation, but this time it’s floral-scented. This picture really captures spring for me, with flowering trees and last night’s rain visible on the street and all of the bright, warm, saturated colors. Everything is overexposed and radiant, from the sky to the sunlight reflected in the damp of the concrete, as well as what caught the orange bug the night before. Everything is gleaming and brilliant and renewed – just like spring.

As I was walking to class Thursday morning at an ungodly hour (any time before noon) it was raining, and the puddles on the ground created a mirror like smooth surface that held a reflection of the trees above them.

As I looked down at the puddles, I saw a reflection of twisted bare limbed trees, superimposed over the mottled browns and grays of the concrete sidewalks that crisscross all over campus. I watched as the raindrops hit the surface of these puddles and made the trees dance and turn on the surface of the water, as though they were part of another world. The reflection was not merely an imperfect and broken representation of the real trees above, but an image of another world locked just behind the surface of the water, separate entirely from the concrete below that did not twist with the ripples of the water: the cold concrete of reality.

2) Photo By Nic Christopher. Taken 22 March 2010 at 5:30 PM in Vancouver, Canada.

3) THEME: Cold

4) DESCRIPTION: I usually find pictures and paintings of flowers and plants to have a warming and happy feeling to them however not in this image. Vancouver is a very wet and rainy place. In the spring the normal weather one would find would be clouds and rain. The lighting becomes very flat and gray. I found these flowers growing just off the beach in town and thought it was a very pretty image. When I uploaded the picture to my computer I noticed that the lighting had influenced the saturation of the greens and purples in the flowerbed to become muted and less brilliant. The very tip of the purple flower is very vibrant however it is the lighting that falls on the background that creates a colder feeling to me. The greens seem to reflect the gray tones of the sky and the rain that had fallen earlier that day. What really speaks to me in this image is the fact that such a vibrant picture has been altered by flat gray lighting to make the entire image feel cold rather than warm and spring like.

1) 3/31/11,  8:30pm, inside car

2) Objective: Looking at the raindrops falling infront of the car lights.

3) Subjective: Sitting in the car looking down the road as we drive, I couldn’t help but notice the raindrops falling infront of the car. You can see the raindrop true size and it looks like the rain is falling in slow motion.