So my mom took this candid picture of me as I was talking to her and adjusting my hair and I didn't think much of it until I looked again and saw that she had captured this warmth/glow effect on my face where my right side is well lit and as it progresses it becomes less bright and it was really interesting to see how the light coming in from the patio blinds defined my facial features. The quality of the picture isn't great but I loved how the natural light lit my face to create a blend of shadows and light and contours on my face.

These mismatched lights in my bathroom are different colors and shapes. Two bulbs give a white, brighter light than the warm yellow ones. The white ones brighten and energize the room more while the yellow ones make me feel sleepier. The white ones look out of place on the wood-looking strip it's attached to because the shape is not round and this strip reminds me of those Hollywood makeup-room lights with the round bulbs. Plus, the white fluorescent lights are very unflattering on the face. The yellow, round lights makes the fixture look more antique and it doesn't light the room up as well. The bathroom has nice decor, but the mismatched white fluorescent lights makes everything look cheaper and illuminates all the paint splatters and cracks in the wall.

Breathing Light

This is a picture I took when I went to one of James Turrell's exhibits at the LACMA titled Breathing Light a couple years ago. I can't even begin to describe the surreal feeling of being immersed in a light surrounded room with a lack of sense of depth perception. In the photo, it is hard to tell if the pinkish color shape on the wall is just a projected image or something you could actually enter. Also, once you enter the room, it is difficult to tell where the ledge ends. The colors were slowly changing through an array of different shades and what was most interesting to me was the fact that when inside the room at a certain point, the frame of the entrance color of light and the light of the room caused a yellow "wall" which disabled you from seeing those outside the room for a short period of time. Needless to say, I didn't want to leave and I wish I could've taken a video inside just to give a more clear idea of the amazingness that is James Turrell but photos/video were not allowed, as well as shoes. Timing and illusion of depth are both methods of altering light and I just learned that Turrell is actually a grad student of UCI! Currently, I am fascinated with his magnum opus of the Roden Crater. Just something that is worth looking into as far as using natural light and architecture as a form of art and science.

Bellagio, Bellagio! Where art thou Bellagio??

I took this picture in Vegas with my best friend kaipo. I was really intrigued by how light could illuminate different qualities of color glass. I thought it was neat because it cover 25 feet of the ceiling. what made it more interesting was the shapes and all of the different colors. now that I look back at the picture each glass piece acts as a filter for the white light. It gave off this cool effect of different saturation's. I think what was most enjoyable about this experience was feeling like a true artist. I felt so inspired. I felt invincible at that moment, standing under a master piece. I would really like to visit again and actually capture it with a better camera. Vegas has many other treasures like the water fall in the Venetian. With the right amount of lighting, I was able to capture something I am very proud of.

 

Twinkle Lights

This one is a bit cliche, but I have Christmas lights hung around my room. I use them because lighting can completely change the atmosphere of my space. When I need to be productive and awake I turn on my icky light fixture, and when I want to feel relaxed and comfortable I just turn on my string lights. They circle the entire room so the light becomes much more even since there are many little sources, instead of one overhead one. Christmas/twinkle/string lights make me feel warm, cozy, sleepy, nostalgic, happy and safe. Weirdly enough, under all of those other feelings, there is something about them that makes me deeply sad/bittersweet/melancholy. Perhaps it's a side effect of the nostalgia. Or perhaps it's because of the very odd shadows they create along the wall. They're spiky but their light is soft. Although it's not apparent in the pictures, I love their amber glow.

Elevator

This is an elevator at the Music Center in LA. The architecture is beautifully lighted. It has light bands and shadow bands on top of each other. I guess they did it by putting light on the horizontal pole/beam?. There are four sections, and the light can only reach about 1/3 of each section from the beam below, which creates the light and shadow strips. It is hard to see where the lights are. The designer hides it well to blend with the architecture. When I walk closer to the elevator, I can see light tubes wrapped on the beam. My guess is that it is not florescent light, but not sure what light it is…

Happy Accident

      I woke up this morning, trying to sleep in for once, and was disturbed by how bright my room was. I had forgotten to close the blinds last night. Luckily it offered a great topic to blog about. Anyways, I noticed how the half open blinds created a shadow that fell on my comforter. I realized there was a couple things going on. First, the angle of the morning sun was coming in at about 40 degrees, right at my second floor window. Second, the blinds were acting as a gobo, creating a pattern with the light from the sun. Thirdly, the surface the light was falling on, my comforter, was uneven and colored which effected how the light and shadows fell and looked. It created this bright, morning, almost etherial, dewy suburban look. Two words to describe the look would have been: awakening and bright.

The Variance of Light and Color

This picture was taken from the Mesa Parking Structure; I was on my way to see an evening performance of Dance Escape when I stopped to document the view.

When I noticed the view, I was halted by the different focal points of light and the beautiful sunset backdrop. There were so many different sources of light: the bright floodlights illuminating the baseball field, the lampposts scattered throughout the parking lot, and the distant lights in the city revealing tall, corporate buildings (though my camera didn’t do the latter justice). In the moment my eye was drawn to the brightest lights and to what they were illuminating, but after revisiting the picture, I was mesmerized by the outdoor parking lot lighting. The contrast between the small pools of light created by the street lamps and shadows captivated me as opposed to the baseball field, which was pretty evenly lit. I was drawn to the variance of light in the background.

The sunset was a plus.

This picture gives me a little feeling of darkness. If I was in the person's shoes, I would think that someone is following me. The backlight gives the audience (me) a punchy reflection where the shadow of the person gets drag three times their height. It seems like the character is facing the light, which can mean that there is something good waiting for him/her towards the light. The brighter the light, the more the character wants to walk towards it. The two dark sides of the picture conveys something evil that will hold the character down if he/she decide to step away from the light.

Golden Hour

My sister and I are total nerds about Golden Hour. It is by far one of the most beautiful times of day and only lasts a short period of time. Please do not judge me for my super dorky selfie. Whenever I happen to be out and about during this time of day and notice myself to be particularly golden, I send a picture like this one to my sister and say "Look it's golden hour!" I am particularly obsessed with this time of day not only because of its beauty, but also because of how drastically the light from the sun changes color throughout the day. I know it has something to do with the atmosphere and where the sun is on the horizon, but really, how is it so golden? It is like a giant gel was put in front of the sun. (Hmm the atmosphere?) What I also find interesting is how despite the golden tint, this is still white light and can still be broken up into all the colors of the spectrum if it was shown through my prism I talked about in my first post. Crazy! (Also this picture is quite a nice example of a side angle lighting position! The sun is also a shadow designer. He's so cool.)

Windows and Blinds

I completely forgot to post for last week. So there's going to be two posts for this week. :)

After taking this class I've started to focus on the angles in which the light comes into the room in the morning. So one particular morning my blinds were turned up and so when I woke up I could see that there were thin lines on the ceiling and also I tried seeing how the light falls on my face and I guess the way my window is positioned makes the light hit one side of my face so that looks brighter than the other. I would say the light comes from a side left angle.

I played around with the blinds a bit and then saw that the when the blinds are turned down instead of up, the light falls differently and it also it the mirror and so there was this glare which is sometimes so hard that it ends up waking me up some mornings that I am asleep. Natural alarm with no sound right there cause it reflects and hits me straight on the face.

I always have this fascination with the way sunlight falls on different things but I have to try to break away from that and notice the different ways other types of light falls in my surroundings.

A Warm Inviting Public Bathroom, is That Too Much To Ask?

The lighting in most bathrooms is just awful. Why is this? I took this picture in a Starbucks bathroom. I notice that most public bathrooms have lighting that creates a dimly lit environment. This creates darker spaces with shadows galore. Also the light actually in the space never feels warm or inviting. It's kind of like they are creating a space that makes the customer feel like getting in an out of the bathroom quickly. Its not a place you want to be in for long. Now, I am not saying I want to hang out in a public bathroom haha, I am just wishing there were brighter, more warm bathroom spaces to be in while doing something so personal.

Lighting an On-Location Film Set

I just spent the weekend filming a short film that takes places in several different locations, each with their own unique feel. It was all shot on location, so that determined a lot of the set up and how the final shot looked in terms of the lighting. Much of it was very similar to what we've been looking at in class, but with a need to be more creative about lighting choices and positioning.
One example was the bar scene, where the lighting director wanted stronger oranges and yellows, but was limited by the huge window that we couldn't block out. This not only meant we had to wait for the sun to pass and not leave huge shadows across all the actors, but also use the lighting fixtures already in the building to increase the ambient light inside.
The scenes in the hallway of an office building were a different story. Their shape meant only a few lights could be used at a time and had be be hidden in doors and around corners. The florescent lights in the building did a good job of lighting the scene and removing the shadows, but the lighting had to be manipulated in a way to make the colors "pop" more on camera.

Timothy Eaton

I captured these photos at the ARC in one of the back rooms when I was closing. The hallway is dark with the EXIT light lit up in red. I've never thought about how ominous the lighting is for a sign that is supposed to show safety (it is procedure to exit through this door and out the emergency door nearby). Should an exit light be this ominous or is it just the connotation that I've associated to it by watching too many scary movies? And the color red has so many connotations, it reminds people of anger, passion, sex, warmth, fire, emergency – is it appropriate in this case?

I've studied other aspects of theater i.e. sound, costume design, scenic design, but lighting is the most fascinating because there are so many different aspect to lighting design. I've studied some aspects because my uncle worked in the automotive field, and I would help him do head light swaps on cars so I understood how to focus beams of light and light reflectors. I would actually like to use light to enhance my photography skills. I think this lighting class would help widen my prospective on how lighting could be used to accentuate the features of the model.

Light and Shapes

The other morning, it was the first time I realized the pattern cast on my wall due to the filtering light through my shoddy blinds. A column of perfect circles was a pleasant sight of a serene equality lined up right above my head. The further down you looked, the more there began to be a splitting of a more focused circle and one of a more hazy circle tightly coupled with it. I would imagine that this would be due to the fact that there was more light filtered towards the bottom of the blinds and the shape of the bottom of the blinds through the side altered the shapes. I was reminded of notebook paper ripped from a spiral notebook and it made me oddly calm, thinking about the last time I used the ripped paper rather than having a fine cut edge. I always love seeing designs and patterns created by filtered light, be it through curtains, blinds, or from cracks in doors and watching it travel through the room based on the position of the sun or light.

wall, and shadow

Banana republic changed their interior design recently for their new season of clothes. I found this wall of fake plants in their store at South Coast Plaza. Those plants were hanging with very tiny hooks on the wall. There were five lights above them, casting a beautiful shadow below those plants. It made the plants look more 3D, like it was coming forward. There were also side lights illuminating the this section. I noticed that lighting can direct customers’ attention when they look around at the store. My eyes were more attracted to the clothes that got a spotlight on it. It differentiate itself from other space where the lighting is a little dimmer. 

Beach Beauty

When I went to the beach last weekend, I didn't expect to experience such beautiful sunlight. I only noticed as I was lying on my towel, and saw the sun positioned directly above me with an incredible rainbow ring encircling it. (I did, of course, have sunglasses on.) The sky was mostly clear, except for a few streaks of clouds running across the ring, spotlighted by the sun's rays. The ring looked as though it was glowing, and was emitting its own light; I tried to capture this within the first picture. I realized that there is so much beautiful light in the sky that I probably don't acknowledge on a daily basis.

Running with the stars.

One of the things that I like the most about Irvine is its clear skies in the night. I am a big fan of running outside by University Hills past midnight and I usually do it because I love seeing the stars following me from above. Here in Irvine there is not much light so I can see as many stars as the eye can perceive. This week I ran up the hills by California Ave. and stopped by the top to just take in all the stars that are out there. I get a little philosophical on what our place in this universe is when I see all those dim lights across the sky. Seeing a completely black background with blue dots scattered across the sky (some dimmer and bunched together and some alone and brighter) really gets my mind liberated.  I wish I had a picture of how beautiful this looks but my camera can see nowhere as clear as my eyes can. I am originally from LA and I have never done this over there. The city lights wash out any hope of seeing beyond our planet. I also find it interesting how one light source can wash out another light source (like city lights washing out stars in the sky).

Morning Light

While walking to class the other morning, this pattern of light on the student center wall caught my attention. I thought it was really interesting looking and decided to turn and look at the sun through the leaves as well. It was around 8am and slightly overcast which I think effected the quality of light. All of the indirect light was cool except for the direct light hitting the wall. I also noticed that the edges were soft and there was a definite hot spot. I'm not a morning person and never usually take the time to look around and see whats going on.

I went to the Improv Revolution show on Friday night and had to park in the Humanities parking lot because of an event at the Bren. As I got out of my car I noticed this view to the left. I have no idea what the structure is and I didn't bother to find out, but it was interesting to me. From where I stood when I took this picture, I could identify a few light sources: street lamps behind me, the sun beneath the horizon, and the lights attached to the structure in various places. The combination of these seemed cinematic in some capacity. It made me feel isolated, but kind of important, and out of place. Perhaps because of the stark lighting on the mysterious white structure came off as rather uninviting, or perhaps because of the contrast between the the beauty of something natural (a sunset) and an industrial machine.
Mostly, it made me feel melancholy. To me the illumination of this machine seemed only like one more way to waste energy. It called attention to itself as an obstacle to the rather lovely sunset behind it.

There was a lights piece at an art gallery on campus. The piece is supposed to be like a Ping-pong game with lights. Two people would stand on either end of the sculpture and hit a button with a hammer to bounce the light back as forth. I thought the way light flowed back and forth from one lamp to the next was interesting and the light looked a little different in each lamp because the bulbs and colors were different. The light connected lamps that were old and new into something familiar and unique. It was cool to play with the lights and it made me think of how lights affect people's energy. The light moved from one lamp to the next fairly slowly. so the game was relaxing and quickly became boring. When a player makes a mistake, all the lights flash and we become more aware of everything in the room for a few moments.

Candles, how I love looking at it when I am by myself  in a dark room. It lights up the whole room with its wonderful magic. How it creates a mood in different atmosphere. How it can be scary when you're telling a ghost story. How it can be romantic when you're with a significant other. It's so beautiful, especially the scented one. It sets off a wonderful mood when you're having Thanksgiving dinner with your parents, or on that Christmas Day, you just want to see your family. How that candle can create a bondage between one another. How I love my candles. 

Rainbow Light!

Here is a picture of my prism. Unfortunately I do not get any direct sunlight in my apartment, so it lives here against my wall. However, when it was hanging in my sliding class door at my house back in Lompoc where I'm from, it made the most beautiful rainbows! Rainbow light has always been my favorite form of light created on this earth. I find it incredibly fascinating how white light from the sun houses every color in the color spectrum, and how those colors can be dispersed when shown through a simple glass prism. How does it do that? I know there is some scientific way of explaining this distribution, but I like to think it's magic. I mean, on the scale of beautiful magical phenomenons, rainbows are pretty high up on the list right? Well they are for me at least. As I begin to learn more about lighting in this class, and how we as humans have learned to harness energy into lightbulbs to create light, I begin to gain a greater and greater appreciation for our sun. We've only been creating our own light (other than fire) for the past century, while the sun has been doing it for billions of years! Think of all those rainbows!

Morning Light Outside My Window

For my first lighting assignment, I wanted to find lighting from something and somewhere that I see everyday. Most mornings I look out my window before I start each day. This very morning I took particular notice to the lighting I saw at first glance. I felt an automatic warmth when I saw the sun hitting the tree outside my window. It made the tree itself stand out from its surrounding environment with a warm glow. As I looked to the street behind it, there was a perfect sketch of the tree on the street made from shadows. The sun giving the tree front lighting brought warmth to the outside from my perspective and gave me an energy inside to start my day.