Drama 16 Stage Lighting

29 Feb. 2016 at 6:40pm – Outside Dutch Treats

A soft bluish white light from the glowing sign of Dutch Treats shines on the branches of a bare tree right outside this establishment.

The light was sad, cold, pure, and spooky. Blue and white, faint and bright, the light varies as it hits the tree in different places. The tree with the cool light looks skeletal and deathly. Death rides on a pale horse and if Death carried a staff made out of a tree, then the staff would be lit to look just like this. The gloom but yet beauty of this bright light reflecting off of the bare tree is haunting and captivating. The mood created by this lighting scene is gloomy and the lighting is brings forth a mood that one might feel at a funeral.

Date: 2/25/2016 Time: 9:37 p.m. Location: pathway between Grad hall/ towers and the parking lot

Objective Description: The night is dark and the only light is coming from the lamp posts that are all along the pathway. The lamps are shaped like little globes and from the path, it is as bright as daytime out.

Subjective Description: Standing at the end of the Student Center walkway, about to cross the street to the pathway allows me to see it from afar. The night sky contrasts with the glowing orbs of the lamp posts and they look like stars on the earth. As I walk onto the pathway, the darkness of the night disappears and I’m enveloped in this light. From the pathway, it seems as though it is mid-afternoon instead of well into the evening. This light made me feel safe and aware of my surroundings. As soon as I stepped off of the pathway to head towards my building, I was again swallowed into the darkness of the night.

This photo is from the blog TheLiontheWitchandtheWardrobeMalfuctioned.wordpress.com, which took it in turn from the motion picture Pan’s Labyrinth.

The theme is cold, and the lighting is cold in this still image.

The lighting spreads a cool blue wash over the scene which gives a feeling of coldness to the beholder. It is like an ocean’s wave’s tears have gone and made themselves at home in the scene, but the tear drops do not fall everywhere. They leave some shadow to contrast the hue of the watery lighting. Due to their hue, soft illumination, and saturation, the wave’s tears, the lighting, might actually subconsciously induce feelings of cold. The lighting contains such a gloomy cold feeling that it touches the mind and instinctively prepares it for darker emotions like those that one might feel after watching someone suffer. The feelings of the lighting are sad, cold, and isolated. This lighting would fit well with a scene of someone stranded in the tundra. It is so cold that it can be seen as being devoid of the warm sunny day and something of the cold, dark night.

2/8/16 – 6:00pm Student Center Hofstra Shuttle Stop

The light is a ground light in a little island with a tree in the middle of the walkway that is nearby the shuttle stop. When this moment happened, the light was buried in the snow but still on. It glowed through the snow.

The little ball of yellowish wonder that was the light shown through the snow like a porous sea sponge. The light poked happily through the pores and holes of the snow. The little fire encased by the snow was warm and comforting; its warmth and blaze was like that of a hearth at home. Although shrouded in the snow, the light was not mysterious, hidden, or imposing but rather it was inviting, charming, and marvelous in nature when compared against the other street lights and its immediate surrounding. Put up next to the darker hues or shades of the not as well-lit snow around it, the golden light only seemed more gentle and kind. Simply put, the light in this moment had a warm, homey feeling in its small gentle but not dim glow that issued from beneath the snow.

Time: Tuesday night, 11:50 pm

Objective Description: As I looked out my window at night, everything appeared to be black and yellow, except one room in a building across the parking lot.

Subjective Description: I was getting ready to go to bed, and had turned off the lights in my room but hadn’t yet closed the shades. In the dark, I was able to easily observe what was going outside my window. Spots of yellow lights were visible from the lamps lighting the pathways and the few cars driving by. Several of the rooms in the other towers were dark, but some still had their shades open to reveal squares of more of the same yellow light. I could easily see the landscape below, but instead of the usual colors, everything appeared to be somewhere between artificial yellow and complete darkness.

There was one exception to the monotone scene below and it caught my eye immediately. Across the parking lot, in the Bill of Rights building, someone else’s room was glowing with some kind of novelty light that cycled through the rainbow. This one tiny square of light was captivating against the plain yellow and black backdrop.

This is a photo I took during a late night visit to the London Eye early last month.

Theme: Night Life

Description: The neon lights burst opulent with a red and blue glow. The vibrant reflections soaked into the ground like that of a permeable sponge. The trees excitedly come to life as if woken from a long hibernation. Their shadows dance along the guided pathway revealing red circular orbits that trace the slow but ever-moving rim of the iconic eye. The dark sky is flooded with tints of red, further embellishing the explosive luster. The surrounding terrain acts as a canvas providing a foundation and the perfect stage for the night life of London.

Date: 1-30-16 Time: 10:45 Location: Outside Roosevelt Field

Objective Description: When leaving the parking lot of Roosevelt Field Mall the contrast between the parking garage lighting and the outside lighting was truly remarkable.

Subjective Description: As i walked to my car from a stressful day of work, I couldn’t help but be bothered by the fluorescent lighting in the parking garage. This just made me annoyed and a little more stressed. As soon as I pulled out of the bright parking garage I was hit by this calming darkness that was lit by the sky and the few street lights. Suddenly, I became calm and didn’t mind being out. It seemed that all my stress and frustration from serving snotty people coffee at Starbucks just left my body.

Source: http://hirolu.deviantart.com/art/JAPANESE-GARDEN-REFLECTION-50-159862826

I found this image in a really convoluted way. First I googled “surreal” to see what I was dealing with outside of Salvador Dali, and I saw a lot of pictures of islands floating in the sky. This made me think of Castle in the Sky, which I linked to Spirited Away (another pretty surreal piece of art), which made me think of Japan, and so I stumbled on some great Japanese garden scenes at night.

I guess gardens aren’t so impressive in the dark unless they are lit in interesting ways. This photo in particular feels surreal to me because of the reversal of expectations in the colors and brightness of the photos. The bright blue-white color of the tree makes it seem like it has almost been scratched out of the photo rather than an object that was already there. Against the greens of the other plants, it looks like a special or a magic tree. The mirror of the photo in the water below also makes me feel a little off balance, light-headedness, or a sort of floaty feeling.

I’ve labeled the light as “blue-white” in my key but I’m not sure if that’s correct–it could also be purple. I would have to know the color of the tree and rocks.

1) April 10, ~10:00PM, my neighbor’s yard

2) The shadow of my neighbor’s tree

3) I’m almost done with lighting moments, I swear.

I was watching my dog in the yard at night and I had a clear view of my neighbor’s hose which sits on a hill slightly above me. She has a light on the side of her house by her garage which gives off a bright yellow light. The light was hitting a tree which has been there for ages, and the shadow stretched almost all the way down to the bottom of the hill. The light was the classic artificial yellow vs. natural blue which is pretty central to all my lighting moments, but the blue shadow of the tree was a new one for me. I felt like it was moving, rolling down the hill in some way which gave a little life to the night.

1) April 2, 10:33PM, my grandmother’s house

2) Night sky in rural central PA

3) I have a lot of great lighting moments from home, which is good because I have some catching up to do.

Hilariously, the first thing I noticed when I got out of the car in PA was the lighting. The weather was fantastic and it was a full moon. Because it’s a rural area, the full moon is the primary source of light and there are plenty of visible stars. I was at my grandmother’s house. She lives in a valley in the middle of nowhere–her neighbors are very far away from her house. The only artificial light in the immediate area was coming from her house and the car lights. I ran out to the middle of the front yard to catch the picture below, but my iPhone camera doesn’t do justice to the real thing. The feeling when I get when I see a scene like this is very peaceful, homey, and sleepy. It probably looks creepy to other people, but I associate this kind of darkness and solitude, this house out in the open, with being home. I feel  like the light from her house is a warm welcome, it’s inviting, and being all by itself in such a vast place, it’s like a beacon.