Blog #2

This picture was taking in Italy around 5 P.M. I was intrigued by how the sun is hiding behind the clouds, which makes the photo less bright. Even though the sun is visible to see the light isn't to strong. The sun is reflecting and bouncing off the water emitting more warmth and exposure to the photo. The boats are a nice contrast to the picture, it adds more depth and it shapes the light more constructively.

Blog #2

This is a boomerang of the Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas. It is a water show that is choreographed to go along with music and every 30 minutes there is another show to a different song. I've seen the show both in daylight and at night and for some reason the nighttime show feels more spectacular and interesting. I realized that it's because at night they implement the use of lights. The lights really help highlight the water and make the effects all the more dramatic. The light also tells you exactly where to look and where your focus should be for different parts of the piece. When the water shoots up above a light, the light helps to create the illusion that the water is floating at the top before being pushed back down by gravity. I think that this show could be even cooler if they added some sort of color to the lights, but the yellow/gold color also help create a feeling of grandness that they may be going for.

Blog #2

This picture is from my first visit to Disneyland. I really like this picture of the castle at Disneyland. Despite the building being so simple, the lighting enhances the building, making it look grand and bigger than it seems. The pink and purple lighting at the top makes it look magical and princess-like. At the bottom of the castle, the lighting is darker with blueish and darker purple. It is interesting to see how the intricate lighting enhances the building.

Blog #2 Restaurant Lighting

After our lighting lecture about how different locations and businesses utilize light differently, I began to wonder how my work would use lighting. I decided to eat there one night and I was sat at a table without functioning lights. At first I didn't have a problem, but then after a while my friend complained that he needed a light. I began seeing how when we aren't told where to focus, we begin becoming uncomfortable, as if we're missing something. I started to understand how this light affected the business. If our lights direct our attention to the food, then our other senses are triggered, and we focus on eating. This is something very important to the servers because they want to "flip tables," and get as many people in and out of there, as fast as possible, to maximize profits. The next week, during my break, I took pictures of the table where we ate, and the table we were first sat in. Comparing the two, its easier to recognize the halo-image that the light gives the center grill. In the end it was an amazing meal with great company, and I now refuse to sit at the light-less tables because the lack of light takes away from the experience. I am now the entitled customer that I loathe so much.

Blog #2

This is a picture from a day at Newport Beach recently. We were taking pictures because it was the prime time in the day colloquially known as "Golden Hour." I decided to take this photo to send to my parents back home. It is unintentionally backlit, so shadows are cast throughout the humps of sand on the beach. The sunlight illuminates a stretch of the water, in a way that it is almost blinding to look at. I did a photography project in high school where we had to take backlighting photos, so it was cool to carry on with exploring that. I really love taking pictures with the sun in this placement. People more commonly take pictures with the sun in the other direction so it is cool to have variety.

blog #2 good afternoon

This is a picture of my front yard back home. I really like the contrast of color between the dirt that is well lit and the shadowy dirt right next to each other. It's so interesting to me how the light or lack thereof can change the color so drastically. Also I really love how you can just tell the air is being hit by the sun. Of course it is not but everything is so bright and sunny and the clouds look happy too. I haven't seen a bright day like this is in a while. i also enjoy seeing which way the sun is coming from by looking at all the shadows. I think this is a pretty cool picture.

Blog # 2 - The LAB

There’s this cute spot in Costa Mesa my friends and I always go to and they recently added old CDs and overhead lamps to the tunnel entrance. The CDs surround you and are all placed in backwards so the silver back faces out and reflect the lights from above. The lights all have different color lamps installed so you see different colors bouncing off the reflective CD backs. It’s a if you’re walking through a retro-looking tunnel of rainbow light dancing off of the CDs all around and off of your skin and clothes. The lighting were warm and welcoming and made it feel like we’d been transported to an alternate universe.

Concert lighting

Just this past weekend I went to a concert. This concert was filled with lights. Until taking this class and having to write about lights, I never noticed how many lights are used and how much lighting design goes into concert performances. There was a huge difference in lighting design between the opening acts and the main acts at this concert. The opening acts only had dim lights on stage and in the house. It seemed like they did not incorporate any lighting design aspects into their performance because it was just the normal, dim house lights on. This lighting did not make the audience excited but rather bored and unenthusiastic. It was kind of disappointing because the dim lights definitely did not add or match the upbeat tempo that the DJ was playing onstage. It was so interesting to notice how much of a difference it made in the mood of the crowd when the main act came on and started to utilize the different lighting designs on stage and in their performance. They had LED lights and strobe lights and a backdrop with visuals that would light up on the LED backdrop. There were different color lights and these lights were also projected and moved around the house. It is so fascinating to see how much the energy of the crowd changes when there are moving lights and strobe lights involved in a performance. Even though the opening act had good music, their lighting design made it really dull and boring; the crowd was not enthusiastic nor excited about the performance. But when the main act performed with their different changing lights, moving lights, LED lights, and strobe lights, the crowd had a very different energy: excited. As soon as the strobe lights went off, people were jumping up and down and were excited. The lighting definitely did affect my mood because I was much more energized and felt alive with all the different color changing light and the lights that moved around me. Also, one aspect I really liked about their lighting design was that they turned off all the house lights and projected lights from the stage into the house. This technique created silhouettes of the performers, and so it gave off a very mysterious energy because you could not see the performers but only their movements. This concert definitely had a lot of work in their lighting design and I am finally noticing how much lighting affects my mood and the environment around me.

Blog #2: A Morning in Greyscale

Blog #2: A Morning in Greyscale

A couple weeks ago we had a slew of days where it was raining, everyday - all day. The sky was covered in heavy cloud cover, the ground was littered with puddles, and the air was damp and wet after many, many inches of constant rainfall. The effect was instant to the environment, the whole world was grey. The sky of course, but the water that sat on the ground was too -  as it reflected to near perfection the clouds above. It created an atmosphere reminiscent of old film noir - dark, mysterious, and ominous in equal measure with people walking with their heads down and picking their pathways carefully. The lack of color made everything seem to blend together at times, melding into singular structures that otherwise could have been more detailed and individual. And when the raindrops broke the reflections on the ground, the grey turned to black and the world blurred into motion. It was a lesson into the surreal - how to make a shot of the real world seem like a dream, taking the details of a vibrant place and boiling it down to its base forms. Who knew that grey could be so grey(t)?

Blog #2: Sunrise

On Wednesday January 23rd, the day we did not have class, I decided to take advantage of this and watch the sunrise at Huntington Beach with a few of my closest friends. Waking up at 6am was absolutely terrible and I really questioned why I impulsively agreed to this, especially in the Winter. The sun rose around 7am and I immediately forgot the pain of waking up and feeling tired due to how beautiful the sun was. I instantly felt at peace and a sense of tranquility filled my entire body. Watching the sun rise and it being the fist source of light to start my day was such a magical feeling that I will never forget, especially because this moment was shared with my closest friends. Watching the entire sky fill up with a billion shades of yellow, red, and orange was breathtaking. My favorite part was seeing the sun reflect against the waves.

Blog #2: Theater Squiggles

1. 

When leaving the movie theater last weekend I noticed how much of it, and other theaters as well, are lit with these types of bright lines of light. I believe the lights are LED's because of how bright they are but I could be wrong. This particular portion caught my eye because of the use of mirrors surrounding the lights gives the illusion that there is more physical fixtures present than there actually are. While this may be an artistic choice, budget wise it seems like this could help reduce costs if used in with the purpose of fashion over function.

Blog #2: Dark-Thirty

Most days I wake up before the sun does. So when I get ready in the morning this is the only light I use when I get ready in the morning so I don't disturb my roommate sleeping around the corner. The bulb is G Type so it is meant to be more decorative. As it can be seen in the picture, it brightens the closet but the door frame acts as a barndoor so light is cut off from the bathroom and my sleeping roommate.

Blog #2 Lunar Corona (aka aliens?)

Saturday January 19th on my nightly stroll back to my dorm with crappy lighting my friend looked up at the sky and asked if the world was ending. I proceeded to stop and what I saw made me stop dead in my tracks. It was gorgeous, there was a beautiful, perfect looking ring around the moon. Of course I took a picture and started planning this blog post, what is better lighting to write about that crazy natural lighting phenomenon? I've included my crummy picture and to match I will write about my equally crummy research on why this ring happened.

Firstly I would like to say I am entirely unqualified to actually talk about the science of this but I find it interesting so I will share what I tentatively and perhaps incorrectly have learned. According to Wikipedia and a science blog this ring was one of two things, it is a lunar corona or it could be a 22 degree halo. A lunar corona is any circle like this around the moon and it doesn't have to be as complete as this one was. Basically this kind of ring is produced when moonlight (and less commonly sunlight and even more rarely really bright starlight) is diffracted by water droplets or ice crystals in the atmosphere. The water droplets/ice crystals act like a lens and cause the light to bend creating a halo around the moon. The size of the corona depends on the size of the particles diffracting the light, so smaller particles cause larger coronae. Coronae often have a hazier ring and can have several colored-ish rings making up the halo.

The other option as to what this mysterious lunar ring could be is a 22 degree halo. The difference between coronae and the 22 degree halo is that the halo is caused by refraction off of specifically ice crystals rather than the coronae being caused by diffraction off of normally water droplets. Honestly I don't really know what this means but that is the distinction. The halo also has the distinction of being roughly 22 degrees in radius around the moon, hence the name. Based on my own observations the halo seems much more clear and defined than the coronae which makes me think what I saw was the halo because it was so clear and not really fuzzy at all like it seems most coronae are. I suppose I could get my protractor out and check but I figure it doesn't matter quite that much.

Regardless of what the ring was it was beautiful and I am very glad that I got to see it. Then I got to see an lunar eclipse the next night but that's a whole different thing. Overall it was a great couple days for lunar events. 

Blog #2: Concert at the Staples Center

This weekend I went to Kelly Clarkson's concert at the Staples Center and noticed something very interesting about the lighting and projection combined. The projections and lighting from the audience were very deceiving in a way that it made the letters and shapes in all of the images in the projection look to be 3-D and real. So much in fact that a few times I found myself questioning if they were pulling those pieces in and out but that thought was taken out when they quickly changed those shapes between each other. This was one event that really made me think and see how light truly can affect an experience and a performance in this case. This event will now make me wonder and pay even closer attention in my future in theatre and life events in how lighting can affect the vision and effects. -Mikayla Slepicoff

Blog #2: The Rose Parade

The above photo I took a year ago at the Rose Parade. I wouldn't say this was a particularly "well-lit" shot, but when deciding what to do for this blog post and looking for a picture, I was drawn to this one because of the ethereal quality of the light. The float with the sun just above it casts it in an almost-rainbow of light, which makes it seem other-worldly. It just made me think of the different mood effects light can have on a person. Toplight creates abstraction and shadows and usually makes a person look scary, but if done in the right away, it could cause an airy and intangible effect, if you were doing a show about the supernatural, for example.

Blog #2 - Sunset in UTC

Yesterday (Saturday 1/26) I was walking through UTC near campus, and I stopped in between Blaze Pizza and the Amazon store to sit on the little fake grass plot by there. It was 4pm, and the sun had just started setting. I looked up and was taken aback by how surprisingly beautiful the sunset was. The sky was yellow on the horizon, fading orange as it went up. It turned blue as it became the main part of the sky above me, but the clouds on the sky were pink. I'm not entirely sure what caused the clouds to be pink, but they were a pleasant surprise. I sat for a few minutes just taking it in. I intended to watch the entire sunset, but some stranger overheard me saying it was beautiful and started a conversation with me about it. Unfortunately the conversation caused me to miss the rest of the sunset, but at least I still have the memory of the yellow-orange-blue-pink sky.

Blog #2: Disneyland Sky

I was at Disneyland a couple weeks ago, the Sunday right before the week of rain. Within minutes I look up to the sky and see this beautiful division above Tomorrow Land and immediately took a picture. On the left side it was a sunset color (it was around sunset time) and on the right it was a gray fog. It shocked me so much because I had never seen it before and quite frankly didn't even know it was possible to have such a strong division of color. It was just beginning to rain but the orange, pink, yellow, white sunset side created a more peaceful inviting vibe whereas the gray fog side created a much colder atmosphere causing people not to want to stay as long. The mixture of both caused a nice feeling of balance.

Blog #2: Fiesta in Santa Barbara

Every year in Santa Barbara, there is a week’s worth of festivities in the summer time called Old Spanish Days, also known simply as Fiesta. It’s a time of celebration and appreciation for the heritage and history of the town, and it always begins with Fiesta Pequeña in front of the Santa Barbara Mission. This photo, taken during one of the performances at Fiesta Pequeña, features dancers that are lit from the front by neutral white light that serves to provide visibility of the performers faces to the audience. While the light itself is very bright, it seems even brighter when reflected off of the vibrantly colored dresses the women are wearing, particularly the white dress. Since it’s much more reflective on the white fabric, the contrasting colors seem even more vibrant next to the white. Similarly, the lights projected on the exterior walls of the Mission next to and behind the dancers also seem to enhance the vibrancy of the costume colors. With the yellow, blue, pink, purple and green vertical strips of light on the wall next to the stage, the dresses seem twice as vibrant and it really enhances the hues of the costumes. Having been to fiesta many times, I can also attest that the use of colorful lighting during events such as Fiesta Pequeña really does set the tone for the rest of the week and invokes a sense of celebratory excitement for the coming events.

Blog #2: Lighting on a Film Set

I was acting in a short film last weekend for a friend and I found the lighting process on set very interesting. The DP (director of photography) is a film student at UCI and he often posts pictures of his work. The picture I attached is a screen grab of a shot taken in the kitchen (I am the girl pictured). He explains in the image how he created the lighting for the whole shot, and I really wanted to talk in more depth about it.

We were already filming at night, but they were able to create an artificial moonlight effect by putting a Fresnel light on a stand outside the kitchen window. There was a reflection through the neighbor's window above the white fence outside, so they took a "flag" (basically a black fabric screen) to block the light reflecting back and showing up on camera. Another light that had a cool effect was the camping light. It is an LED light with built-in magnets that were used to attach it under the microwave. They also added a gel to get the orange tinted effect of an actual microwave light. You can faintly see the orange tape matching the gel in the picture, but I was told when they edit the film it will be masked out. Also, not pictured, in the fridge they used a large quasar light to make it look like a bright fridge light when I opened the door to get soda. On top of all of this there was also haze sprayed, literally from an aerosol can, to catch the light coming in from the window. The downside to the spray was the slight dryness that developed in our throats as the night went by, but since there was little dialogue it was not too bad. Though it is not exactly a picture from everyday life, this film set taught me a lot about how lighting works and how practical light can be created in film.

Above is a picture of my suite common room at around 4 a.m. My suite mates decided to build a fort around midnight and we had put up a friend's extra Christmas lights a week before. All in all, it felt pretty cozy, which I think was caused by the warmth of the lights and how dim it was. Since it was downlit, that kept it from being eerie since the sparse lighting still allowed for people's faces to be seen. In general, it was a very warm and homey feeling, and I would've liked to have spent more time in it (if the fort hadn't come down).

Nick Krentel: Blog Post #1 Sun-Dappled Curtains

Believe it or not... this is a picture of "golden hour" piercing through my bathroom curtains back in Texas. This particular picture recalls a quote from one of my favorite TV shows called Pushing Daises in which the character Chuck, who has recently been brought back to life, remarks how lucky she feels "to be alive in a world with sun-dappled anything," and I've always found that quote to be just so touching and genuine. I mean, all this is sunlight and a bath curtain and yet it still looks beautiful (at least to me it does). And I do feel lucky to be alive, in southern California, where everyday the Sun lights up so much beauty around me. So shout out to the Sun! We revolve around you for a reason; you're the original spot light!

Blog #1: Christmas lights

I decorated my room with Christmas lights which are on the wall beside my bed. I put up these lights as I like the warm color of the lights in comparison to the lamp stand which is brighter and whiter which allows me to see things clearly and read. I enjoy turning on these Christmas lights and turning off the lamp stand when I am on my bed watching movies. It gives off a warm and cozy vibe which I like when I want to relax and chill for the night. I also intentionally took this picture from the side view and focused on the lights closes to the camera as I really like the aesthetics of bokeh in my picture.

Blog Post #1

I usually work the opening shift at Starbucks 4-5x per week. If I am positioned on bar making hot drinks at dawn, the sun pierces through the front glass windows and doors and hits me right in the eyes. It is a little annoying because it blinds me a little and I am trying to work fast but at the same time it feels good because it's warm on my face. I take a deep breath and take on a new day.
Also, the whole store kind of comes to life and fully awakens when this first light of day floods the store. At this time, coworkers and customers seem to absorb the energy from the light as well.

Blog Post #1: LED Market Sign

This week I chose to talk about an LED sign I encountered at the Grand Central Market in LA. It immediately jumped out at me because of the colorful lights and the amount of items they were able to include. I found myself looking at it for a while trying to figure out what exactly all the images were. With all the chaos occurring at the market it is only fitting to have a chaotic LED sign. It is very fitting for the location because in a market with a variety of food options and a variety of people there truly is a little bit of everything. This is echoed in this sign that involves countless colors ranging from red, blue, green, yellow, etc. and images ranging from legs to palm trees. Although the sign has many different colors involved, red definitely dominates. Which adds to the alluring, sultry, and inviting vibe of the sign. It also makes the market as a whole have more warmer tones for their lights which is a lot more relaxed than having a bright white light but it's not too relaxing that you want to stay forever. After looking at the sign for a few minutes your eyes do get a bit tired because of how bright and how many colors are being featured. It also was the focus of many pictures. Before I could get a picture I had to wait for many people to finishing posing in front of it which caused even more business to the market and to the artists who created the piece.

Blog #1 Lights in the Robert Cohen Theatre

This weekend I have been helping hang electrics for lighting at the Robert Cohen Theatre. I've been exposed to many different lights that have been produced by the PAR and Source 4 instruments, along with their assigned gels. We're  at the phase in the hanging that allows us to have the space be black so that we'd be able to isolate the effects of the lights. This brings me to by main topic; during every break we were reintroduced to the power of the house lights. After our eyes had adjusted to the darkness, the intensity of the house lights magnified and caused an uneasy feeling in the crew. The lights were bright and white; they were capable of being slighting dimmed, but were set fully on, as far as I know. The light felt as if it was beating down us with immense pressure even though they were only fulfilling their purpose and lighting the room. The house lights at the Robert Cohen Theatre allowed me to understand that light could be used as a way to make someone feel or look small in comparison, or as a way of defeating a person on stage.

Blog #1: Lighting within my apartment

After I was assigned to be more aware of the light that surrounds me in my everyday life, I thought I would have to deliberately go to a concert or something just to see lights and do this assignment; I was wrong. I started noticing that there is so much different light that surrounds me wherever I go at any time of day. Because I am home at my apartment, for a lot of the time, I noticed my home lights the most. My roommate just got a new LED light device that flashes light all across the room ceiling. The device basically illuminates light from within the device and makes the light pass through a glass cover, forcing the light to reflect and deflect within the dented glass cover before being projected onto the ceiling. The light being projected from within the glass covering also moves around, so it looks like it’s moving on the ceiling when it again passes and deflects through the glass covering. The light also changes color. As a viewer, it keeps me intrigued. The moving and changing colors of the light holds my attention and makes me feel happy just watching these lights. The changing colors make me feel excited and ready for something. I feel more alive and energized when I see the fast moving lights and colors that sprawl across my ceiling. With this energy within me, it makes me want to put on high tempo music to match the lighting. This type of lighting did not feel complete without music. This type of lighting sets the mood for like a party setting; I think it is because it does make people feel energized and excited and ready to party. The moving lights also makes me want to move too, maybe even dance. This lighting contrasted dramatically from just the regular kitchen light I sit under to do my homework and is right next to the LED device. The yellowish, whitish kitchen light definitely does not get me to feel excited and ready to dance. Instead, it makes me feel more calm. I find it so interesting to examine how two very different lights in my apartment make me feel two very different ways.

Blog #1- Sunset in Newport

Blog #1- Sunset in Newport


The lighting in this photo brings up a warm and inviting feeling. When I took this picture I was mesmerized by the different colors in the sky that made the whole ocean look like cotton candy, From the reflection of the water and the silhouettes of the people on the beach made it seem like it was a  dream. The different layers of the clouds helped utilize the textures within the lighting. I can see orange, yellow, blue, purple, red, black, and white all coming together as one. The people walking on the beach helped enhance the dynamic of the picture. It brought everyday life into existence which made this lighting more romantic and entranced.

Blog #1 - Lizzie Menzies

The lighting that I noticed this week that had an impact on me was the lighting tactics used at my sorority's bid day. It was held in the sorority house, and the lighting in there is usually harsh, bright fluorescent lighting. However, for this day, our theme was "Winter Wonderland," so the directors of the event were aiming for a much cozier, winter cabin kind of feeling. They made the choice to dim the lighting throughout the house, and let the string lights that were set up be the central source of lighting. As a result, the pictures people were taking were not as well-lit as usual and required the use of flash generally, but it was very worth it to have the transformative atmosphere that the change in lighting provided. Another special feature which was not photographed was the snowflake projections that were projected onto the front of the house. I am no lighting expert, but I think it was using a laser lighting kind of machine, and it really brought that extra level of effort that created the vibe of the house.

Blog #1 - Infamous Dorm Lighting

At the beginning of this week I was determined to find good lighting in my life to take a picture of but when spending one evening in my friend's dorm room I realized that some of the lighting that really affects my life the most is poor lighting. My friends, like myself, live in an Arroyo Vista dorm room that has a single light at one end of the room opposite of the two beds. The single light is round and roughly a foot across in diameter. It cast's a harsh florescent bluish light. However, despite the actual lighting of the room, looking just at the light itself is kind of beautiful. The shape and color of the light means that looking directly at it looks just like a pool of light on the ceiling. The issue comes when the light is dispersed. Because the light is pushed to one side of the room the far part of the room is bathed in a concentrated sterile looking light where as the side of the room without light is cast into a dusty gloom. When taking pictures of the light dispersion it looks as though you can see a distinct line where the direct light stops and the room falls into darkness. I chose to discuss this particular lighting situation because it has been the cause of many conversations and even more complaints. The way the light is set up during the evening and night it is impossible to do anything in the section of the room that the light doesn't directly hit without supplemental light, I have implemented such supplemental lighting in my own room. But in addition to inconvenience, this lighting casts and unfortunate grim mood on an otherwise cheerful room. The light makes all who enter seem a few shades paler and the entire energy seems duller, dejected, and industrial. When the lighting in a room is softer and welcoming and makes the occupants look good it is easy to overlook the lighting, however, when the lighting in a room is cool and makes the occupants look pale and sick it becomes highly talked of and widely complained about.

Post #1: in the courtyard

This is a picture I took in the courtyard in front of the green room cafe last week. While looking up into the trees, it was a hot day and I was feeling sort of tired but in the shade the trees managed to create a really cool area to lay down. I was looking up and took the picture because I loved how shadowy it looks at the bottom of the tree leaves, yet in the bottom left center part of the picture you can see a higher layer of tree leaves completely lit up by the sun. The leaves are so close to each other but because of the way the sun hits them there’s a giant contrast in not just the light but actually the color shown on the leaves  thanks to the light. The leaves went from appearing as a green to a yellow because of the light hitting them on top of the tree. This was also around 2pm so the sun was a little past overhead. 

I also really love the way the sky is completely visible as to how sunny it is out. Nothing is too bright  or too dark too see from the sky to the shade under the tree. The bright blue and lightly cloudy sky is so beautiful through that hole in the roof of the trees. 

I love how the tree isn’t completely blocking the sky from poking through. There’s not enough leaves layered over each other so there’s little specks of howls here and there creating spaces for dots of lights to shine through onto the tree branches. 

Finally I don’t know if it’s a matter of the light but I really love how many different colored leaves there are in this tree. I see at least three shades of green, two shades of orange, and two shades of yellow. 

Bright Lights in the Big City

Having lived and grown up in big cities (i.e. Los Angeles and Las Vegas), I’m quite used to and fond of bright city lights. I find that the lights in large cities feel very familiar, comforting and weirdly soothing to me despite their typical harshness and intensity. Skylines and nightscape views of metropolitan areas are some of my favorite photography subjects to look at; thus, I chose a city image to focus on in this first blog. In this particular photo that I found of a street in Seoul, the buildings and sidewalk are illuminated by a variety of sharp lights from the neon signs lining the brick walls, most of which are blue or white with some red and pink hues dotted throughout. There are rain drops falling from the sky, puddles on the ground, and various cars lining the street; all of which reflect the lighting and enhance the vibrancy of the blueish hues. Due to the intense brightness of the neon, the contrast between the lit and unlit areas make the shadows seem even darker in the foreground of the picture. Even though the buildings aren’t very tall and the street is a bit narrow due to the parked cars and crowd of people walking in the distance, the vibrancy and abundance of the neon signs makes the area feel larger than it actually is because the lighting doesn’t allow for enough shadows or contrast overall to make it feel compact. In general, I think most people would find this scene very overwhelming, off-putting, and/or uninviting because it is so incredibly bright and it’s hard to know where to look because it’s a bit of a sensory overload. However, I really love this photo because the vibrancy and intensity of the lighting really showcases the “city never sleeps” and cutting-edge temperament that I think of when I imagine being in a city like Seoul.

Blog Post #1: Aldrich Park at Night

The other night the fire alarm in my building went off in the early ours of the morning, and continued on for about fifteen minutes before we were informed that it was broken and it would probably be a short while before they could fix it. Instead of shivering in the cold night air with my hapless neighbors, I decided to take a walk to campus and back. When I reached Aldrich Park, I stopped at one of the concrete rails that overlooks much of the area and was taken aback by how breathtaking it all was. At night, Aldrich Park is only illuminated by the spherical tall lamp posts that dot its path ways, which provided an eerie atmosphere to the trees and grassy areas within the park that are not lit.  But these lampposts created an image, from my point of view, of glowing pathways amid an ocean of darkness. The white-lit paths snaked through the park, empty of visitors, and after gawking at the scene in front of me for several minutes, the posts beneath the lamps faded slightly from exposure so that they appeared only to be these floating spheres of light. In that moment, the landscape was magical and created a feeling of nostalgia that I didn't expect. It really was a great memory that came from a frustrating issue.

Blog Post #1: Balls of Light

I went to Spectrum shopping center yesterday and there are so many random light installations and elements that add to make your shopping experience unique and interesting. In this particular installation, it's on the side of a building and there are panels of black screens with little balls of white light that bounce around inside the box. As I observed others moving around in front of it, it seems that there is some sort of motion sensor that captures the mover and allows for the balls of light to move according to the person's movement. My friend took this opportunity to do some dance improvisation in front of the screens and it was interesting to see how the balls of light reacted to the ways he would move. We walked past this wall a couple times, first in the daylight and again when it was dark. It was interesting to see how the natural light affected the way we experienced the lights on the wall/projection. In the daytime, it's less noticeable because the way the natural light reflects off the wall, but once the sun went away, the lights on the screen popped out more and drew the attention of more people around it.

Blog Post 1: Morning Fog

I took this picture while walking to campus. The picture does not quite show the depth of the fog or do the light's beauty justice, but it gives a good idea of what I wanted to talk about. It was early in the morning, just before 8 AM. 

As I said before, it was foggy and as I looked down my street, the morning light hit the fog beautifully. It was almost as if the fog sliced the light into layers. Each layer differentiated the distance between objects, blurred by the fog. This was especially apparent looking at the trees and cars. They slowly blur to grey blobs in the background of the picture. There were also puddles on the sidewalk that bounced the light. They became dark and glassy, almost like mirrors in the pavement. It was a little chilly, but a truly beautiful morning. It made the early walk a little more bearable. This picture was especially interesting to me because there is a fairly clear-blue sky, but so much fog to dilute my vision. It was interesting to see so much fog with such a clear sky.   

Blog Post 1: Pixar Pier

I finally went to Disneyland for the first time in years the other day. There’s nothing that hits me with nostalgia like Disney does, and I got particularly emotional when I stood on Pixar Pier for the first time and saw the way the sun was positioned in the sky and how it brought everything to life. Even though the day was gloomy, the sun peaked through the clouds just right to brighten up all the colors on the Ferris wheel and Incredicoaster. It shown so brightly and made the relfections dance so perfectly on the water down  in front. It was the perfect time of day where the natural light of the world makes everything around you appear more lively without being too bright or overbearing.

Blog #1: Post Modern Dating and The Selfie

       

While I was scrolling through my dating apps today, I thought about this assignment and came to the realization of how the lighting of one's selfie can alter how that person is perceived. Take the first photo for example, the dim frontlighting of his face cuts off the top portion of his head and melds into the rest of the unlit background since the intensity of his camera flash is too low to reach all features captured in this photo. Taking this into consideration, this selfie gives a more casual tone to this person as the lack of overall illumination reflects the lack of effort put towards capturing his entire face, something that many would consider neccessary in this type of dating platform. In comparison, the second photo has a wash of light to capture the entire subject and background while playing with textures through the vertical shadows used. This photo creates a more open tone through the light intensity as well as a visually interesting atmosphere through use of texture. With this in mind, the latter of the 2 photos would produce a more viable dating candidate, in my own opinion, because of their intriguing lighting choices utilized in their photo, something that I have subconsciously noticed in the past but never had fully analyzed until now.

Blog #1 - Trying to Find Atmosphere

A few nights ago, I sat down in front of my T.V. to relax at the end of the day. I had two lights on: a warm, yellow lamp in the corner of the room behind me to my right, and three cold, white, overhead fluorescent lights in my kitchen to my left. I could see the room around me and the T.V. clearly, but the fluorescent lights from my kitchen made me feel alert and restless. I turned those lights off, leaving just the warm, yellow lamp on, and the atmosphere in the room became much more homely. I felt more like I was in a living room with a fireplace and less like I was in a busy kitchen, which I wanted. However, the room was too dark now; all of the corners (besides the corner with the lamp in it) became holes of darkness that seemed to suck up the welcoming light from the lamp. I tried to watch T.V. like this, but being surrounded by encroaching darkness made me feel uneasy, made the room feel smaller, and gave me a headache. So, I turned on two yellow overhead lights behind me to see if that would give the room more light while still maintaining the atmosphere of a warm home. Success! The room felt more open because there was more light, and the yellow color of the overhead lights maintained the warm atmosphere that I wanted. I'd solved my problem; that is, until I went to watch T.V. again. In the middle of the T.V. was a dark silhouette of my reflection, caused by backlight from the two overhead lights behind me. I couldn't watch T.V. clearly now... Not success. At this point I accepted my defeat, turned off the two lights behind me, and turned on the fluorescent kitchen lights. I decided that, although I couldn't achieve the welcoming atmosphere that I wanted, I could achieve the feeling of an open room that I could see clearly. Looking back on this experience, I find it interesting how the lighting in a room can cause physical sensations (such as my headache), can change my perception of the size of a room, and can set different atmospheres that give me different feelings in my body. I feel like this is something that I've probably experienced many times, but have never been conscious of until I made an effort to be.

Blog #1- LA Broad Museum Light Box

I went to the Broad Museum in LA last week and took this Boomerang in one of the exhibits. This lighting show was inside of a large square box with 3 holes and light and mirrors inside of it. The thing that I noticed while looking at this was how the mirrors helped to duplicate each of the lights making a pattern along all sides of the walls of the box making it fully covered. They also had the colors of the lights changing so that it made the lights look like they were moving and changing patterns. This though it may seem simple in idea with just mirrors and a few lights made me very interested in how shapes, color and light can make such a big difference in even just a small space I can’t imagine how great it would look within a bigger space with even more lights to contribute to it. -Mikayla Slepicoff