"Red sky at night, sailor's delight, red sky in the morning, sailor's take warning."

Hey folks, I just wanted to point out the red sky last night.  I didn't have a camera (phone was dead), but apparently there was a lot of dust in the air because the sky turned bright red just before the sun went down.  "Red sky at night, sailor's delight, red sky in the morning, sailor's take warning."

Blackwater, Brightsky

I was at Blackwater Music festival this weekend and saw some great examples of lighting.  Some of the things that immediately stuck out to me where the contrast of colors from the tops of the stage to the bottom of the stage.  For instance, I glanced at the stage once and noticed that he top was lit entirely with reds, wheile the lower half of the stage was lit entirely with magentas and violets.  Blue light penetrated from a couple (two, maybe three) moving lights in the center of the field of view.  These elements worked together to create a great example of contrast on the stage. Below is a picture of the stage set-up during Stephen "Ragga" Marley's set, though it does not capture the lighting I mentioned in the above paragraph (unfortunately, I don't have a picture at that moment).

Photo was taken from the Blackwater music festival webpage, and can be found at http://www.blackwatermusicfestival.com

Light Painting Practice

I tried my hand at light painting last night.  A couple of the pictures came out alright:

This was a 30 second exposure.  It was much too bright, I think.

So we dropped the exposure time to 10 seconds and opened the aperture a bit...

And, eventually, we dropped it to seven seconds and got this.

      I had hoped to soften the picture a bit by lowering the Saturation some, but we were pressed for time.  It'll give me something to try next time.

Capturing Light...

I thought I'd post a couple cool images of light captured in time...

This was done with a lantern.  We had to write the word backwards with the shutter on the camera open to create an image that made sense.  If you highlight the picture, you can see the forest in the background.  I had hoped to bring this out more in the photo, but I'm pretty amateur.

This was an accident, but it came out pretty neat.  You can see where some of the lights moved (because their trajectories change relative to the other lights), but you can't see the end result. 

This is a different kind of capturing light, as the light coming into this solar cooker is focused to a focal point and used to boil water.  At the focal point is a tin-foil lined box that heats up.  A 10-gallon pot of soup, water, etc. boils relatively quickly on top of the box in sunlight hours.

This picture was taken about 5 miles south of Naples at around 2:00am.  The light coming into the picture from the left is light pollution from the city, while the white light on the right of the picture is from the moon.  In reality, it was effectively pitch black where this picture was taken.  To capture enough light to make the picture bright enough to see the shutter was left open for over 40 seconds.

Thanks for reading,

All the Best,

Aaron

Intro to my Lighting Journal

Hello everyone,

      This is my first entry; a little late, but exciting nonetheless.  I've been thinking about how I might begin this journal for a few days and have been walking around with a camera in order to "play with light."  Here're a few pictures:

Reflections from a puddle.  A lot of red light gives this a photo a sense of muddiness, and mixed with the green in the photo is looks almost like Jurassic Park.  Ahhh!!

This one was taken in roughly the same place and is also reflections off of water.  Here, though, the picture is in black and white.  It kind-of looks like Kansas, I think.

      In the next examples, one picture lets in a large amount of light from across the plectrum, creating a very warm, inviting feel, while another chokes the "cooler" frequencies, creating a more foreboding or vintage-looking photo:

      I have also been going through old photos to see how my perception of light has evolved over the years, and, more importantly, how it is changing in this class.

The light coming through the bubble in the upper right of this photo gives the picture a surreal feeling.

Whoa nature, you pretty!  A slit in the clouds produces a stark contrast between light and shadow.

Playing with the aperture and shutter speed gives a clearer, crisper image than the one above.

A dolphin uses his blowhole to separate the light spectrum.  He is a talented dolphin.  I use a hose.

      Thanks for reading.  For my next post, I hope to take some pics of lighting design in and around Orlando….I think there're some good opportunities downtown.

Best, 

Aaron