This weekend I went up to Santa Barbara to visit some friends and family. The picture I used for our first lighting project was taken on the balcony at my parents house there, so when I was thinking about what do use for my blog this week, I thought I would revisit that location. I took the picture from the same balcony, but, as you can tell from the light it was during the later stages of the sunset. Although it is hard to tell from the photo, there were pinks and purples as well as the firey colors that appear in the photo. After all our work with colors, looking at all the different shades and hues in a sunset furthers the points about the complexity of the subject. It seems as if almost any color could have fit into the sunset, just like almost any color can fit a mood in the theatrical setting. Sunsets have to be one of the most impressive embodiments of natural light there is. In theater, turning the sunset into a tool for emotion or environment would be very useful, so how do we do it? A skilled lighting designer could definitely give a scene the feeling of a sunset fairly easily, it is then just a matter of how close they can get to the majesty of the actual thing.
I went online and found a few images of theatrical lighting that was trying to evoke sunset. See what you think about them. The first two are my photos, the next three are found online.
Nice study of sunsets.
ReplyDeleteThey are tricky - in many ways they are easy to do but to infuse the play's specific themes and emotions can be tricky.
I do completely agree that studying sunsets are one of the best way for a lighting designer to get more connect with color, angle, intensity and emotion
Nice post!