Blog #4: Sunrise

So often times when I head to work in the morning I head out around 5:30am and it is still dark outside, which is more depressing than you might think. But recently I had a day where I was called in a little later and was treated to a sight I didn't expect. You guessed it, I saw the sunrise, but it wasn't at all as magnificent as it is in the movies. In popular media, the sunrise view is almost synonymous with the sunset - an amber glow that washes infinitely over a sea of clouds as the day comes to a somber finish. But for me, at zero-dark hundred in the morning, the sunrise wasn't at all like that. Instead, what met me was a much darker version of what seven o'clock looks like: grey and overcast. However the difference between overcast and this particular sunrise was this, the sun had come up in such a way as to dye the clouded horizon a shade of pure white. Light hit the atmosphere and the clouds diluted the suns warm morning rays so that the dark grey and the amber orange filtered into white. And thus, sunrise felt like almost noon, and the clock in my head was confused. Nevertheless, the unusual sunrise made me think about color combos. If something as beautiful as the sunrise could be corrupted by grey, what other vibrancy could be lost with the wrong kind of angle wash? A change in color can compromise one feeling and shift the mood to something darker, or something brighter, or it could even contrast in a way as to make the light feel out of place - like my illegitimate sunrise. Color is an important tool in our arsenal as lighting designers, which is what makes it so important to realize its vulnerabilities.