Week 5: Underlighting

Sorry the quality of this photo is kind of blurry. This picture is an interesting experimentation with underlighting. So far in class, we have only used down light, and this picture demonstrates a rather dramatic use of light hitting the face from underneath rather than overhead. You can see the shadows are almost opposite of the way we usually see them; you can see the shadows from my eye sockets stretching back over my forehead instead of down my cheeks. Also, my eyes are highlighted instead of shadowed, but there is a shadow right underneath them where my cheeks block some of the light. Overall, the whole look is almost exactly the opposite of downlight- that would make sense. I mean that the parts of the face that are usually shadowed in downlight are highlighted here, and vice versa. I know we'll be able to use booms soon, and this picture just made me think of ways we can use side or underlighting to highlight the body and face in a different way than we have so far in class.

I'm also really sorry this one came in so late- it was a crazy, hectic weekend. My apologies.

Week Five - Hidden in Red

Sorry, this is another post about color theory.

So today I went to the Tim Burton exhibit at LACMA, and in one particular room there was a showcase of his most recent works (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Stain Boy and Frankenweenie). Along one wall, there was a house set up so that you could look into the window and see a Christmas scene. I passed it once without too much attention and later returned to look into the little window. Inside, there was a Christmas tree, a color wheel/rotationary light (like in the above picture; I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside), the character Stain Boy, and the legs of a man extending from another room. As the color wheel rotated, the lights inside the house would change to match that color. As I approached for the first time, the wheel and lights were red, casting the entire scene into a red hue. This appeared normal to me, I assumed that since everything appeared red, most of the scenery was white. Then, the color shifted to yellow.

As the fade-in/fade-out started, bright patches of red suddenly stood out to me that I hadn't seen before. It was revealed that Stain Boy's entire left side was covered in blood, and that there was also a puddle surrounding the man's legs. This only suprised me because it had been invisible before: the blood was completely hidden by the red light. When the red and blue lights came on, the stains were still visible, but only because they were off-colored from the rest of the scene, like they were black or dark brown. But the red, because it was reflected by the stains themselves and the red within the white, was hidden. This gives me ideas about ways to suprise audiences with revealing costumes or sceneries. :)

Week 5: Foggy Mountains

This picture was actually taken by my sister, however I found it to be very intriguing when she showed it to me. She works as an archaeologist in the mountains out in the middle of nowhere and someone captured this picture of her walking through her site. I love how the clouds in the distance looks so daunting and how the foggy mist from the clouds blends into the mountains on the right side of the picture. When I look at this picture I get a sense of loneliness and I feel like there would be a cold wind moving through the grass, however when my sister was describing this day she told me it was hot and muggy. I love the contrast between the dark mist trailing down to light sky and then back to the dark green of the grass. I see so much dimension within this picture and I think this is a beautiful sight.

Week Five - The Intensity of a Sunset

     I was on my way to Target the other night, when I stepped out my front door and saw that the sun was setting. I ran inside, grabbed my camera, and took this picture. My favorite thing about it is that you can almost see the many colors in the light that the sun is giving off. The blue sky is fading into grey, and the clouds are highlighted as they reflect the sunlight. Because the palm trees and everything else in the picture is backlit, they are in silhouette. This is a warm, peaceful image to me. I find it relaxing to look at. I can almost feel the last rays of the sun hit me before it slips away behind the horizon. Although it is surrounded by the cool color of the grey sky, the intensity of the sunlight seems to be what gives the photo its warm feeling. 

Week Five - Illuminating candlesticks

So my boyfriend has this obsession with cleaning his ears out with Candlestick Wax removers. It's literally some kind of cloth paper wrapped into a candle stick thing that you stick in your ears and light on fire. You usually put the candle stick through a paper plate and then put the candle stick in your ear so when you cut off the burnt part of the candle stick it won't fall on your face and burn your skin.

My roommates and I didn't have any paper plates so we used a white card board box lid to poke a hole through. So in this picture, my boyfriend's head is underneath the box and the candlestick is going through the box into his ear.

ANYWAY! I took this picture while this was all happening and I thought it was so neat. I loved that there were so many different colors within the fire just because it was a different temperature. I know we see this every time we deal with fire but for some reason with this weird candlestick - wax remover thing, the fire was so unbelievably bright that it illuminated the rest of the room more than our three candles do. The intensity and color is what made the difference in this one.

Week 4: Shading and Color Pallete

On the way home from Yosemite, I took pictures of things that caught my eye. One of them was the clouds and their shadows over Mono Lake on the 395. This picture just has so many different shades of color, but what caught my eye was that they have a very similar pallete/ color scheme, like what works in class a lot. The deep blue of the water is very close to the color of the shadows cast by the clouds, and also the color of the clouds themselves (usually on the bottom). The different shades of blue in the sky are similar across a pallete- darker in the top of the picture, and lighter in the background. The clouds are white, blue and grey, but when you look closely, they are many different shades of each of those colors in different places. The bottoms of the clouds are very dark blue/grey, but the tops are lighter grey into very white. The white really pops against the darker, richer colors of the rest of the picture. The land that the clouds are shadowing is a light brown-green that unites the deep richness of the lake (the greenish tinge) with the lighter aspect of the clouds (the light brown aspect). Altogether, I love this picture and the many shades that it contains.

Week Four - City Walk

This Friday, I went to Universal Studios Hollywood with a girlfriend for the first time ever. After the day in the park we walked around City Walk for the evening. The lighting was amazingly refreshing and needed. We were so tired but as soon as we turned the corner and saw the vibrant, lively colors we woke up and suddenly felt like we had energy and wanted to explore the "City". We decided to grab food and walk around and see everything. I thought it was so cool that even a feeling and energy could change with lights.

After working with lights inside of one room and balancing light and making sure it all works together, I was impressed and curious as to how it all works at a place like this. Something so big where EVERYTHING is lit in the way we expect and picture a city to be but no light of any building took away from another. I've never thought of that before or looked at it in that way but thought they must plan it all out for so long and make sure it is all giving off different moods and feelings to fit their specific store but having it compliment other stores.