Light Observation 5.1 (The Last Touch of Sun)
1) 2/26/12 – 5:22 PM – Adams quad, facing east.
2) OBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was walking out of Lowe on saturday evening just as the sun was going down. The tops of Barnard hall and Davison Hall were lit by the sun and the rest of the buildings were in shadows along with the quad. The library was also lit up by the sun as well.
3) SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION: I was working all day in Lowe on saturday. Finally at 5:00 I began to clean up so that I could go meet all of the people who were in tech for dinner before I needed to go to Vagina Monologues. I finally stepped out of Lowe on my way to the student center. The air was clear from all of the wind that day and the sky was mostly clear. The sun was just beginning to set and the shadows on the ground were becoming very long. I could tell that it was starting to get to be the time of day where the sun was low enough that the air began to feel colder and blue. The shadow of Lowe was being cast all the way across the quad and onto the building across the way. The shadow made it three quarters of the way up the building and made the quad feel cooler and more somber. The upper 25% of Barnard Hall was illuminated as the sun cut through the pollution of the long Island air and cast a burning yellow-orange color onto its walls. Davison hall seemed to match this phenomena along with a majority of the library.
As I walked through the “cool” air and darker shadows I looked up at the warmer “polluted” light that was being cast upon the buildings around me. Looking at these colors with their richness and intensity seemed to make me feel warmer just by imagining the sunlight hitting me as I walked through the quad. It was an amazing sensation to be in such a “cool” setting yet feel warmer, simply by responding to the light around me even though that light was simply out of reach.