Light observations

Light observation #1: 

        Driving casually at night has always been one of my favorite experiences visually. At night I am free from the visual cacophony of the day. Free to take in the symphony of lights passing my car and gleaming off of my windshield.

I have distinct memories of squinting into the cheap chandelier overhanging my dining room table one night years ago. I tilted my head and watched the bulbs’ light split through my eyelashes. Driving at night reminds me of that simple, beautiful sight.

Light is more loud when the sun has sunk below the horizon. Streetlights and stoplights paint an emotive picture over each tree and building they touch. Basically, I really like it.

#2:

        I have always found fluorescent lighting to be positively soul crushing. Whether I’m spending countless hours in an over-lit high school classroom or I’m spending 20 minutes in Walmart I always feel as though I am Alex in the infamous scene from A Clockwork Orange when he is having his eyes held open by machines.

        The way I see it, abundant fluorescent lighting is supposed to mimic the effect of the sun – daylight (which I also occasionally detest). Let it go on the record, however, that it is a terrible, phony, representation of sunlight. Fluorescent light lacks character. It forces its way into your eyelids and laughs at your pain.

And it is not even used with good intent. Schools want to keep their students awake – to force their (usually terrible) circadian rhythms into submission. Walmart wants to keep their lifeless employees upright.

        Basically, fluorescent lighting is the devil.

#3:

       

        I find it interesting the way long exposure photography seems not to draw out motion but to smooth it over. In doing my abstract photos I attempted two long exposures in which I aimed to paint patterns with light. One of those photos – the spatula under the rippling water – gave me an unexpected result.

        I expected the camera to see the distortion on the surface of the water, but instead I got what looks to be a spatula sitting in a bathtub with some slight distortion. The film did not pick up a sampling of the water’s motion the way your eye does. The film picked up the collective motion of the course of the exposure and smoothed it out into one (pretty disappointing) image. The same goes for the shot of Kyle in the dark with a phone flashlight on his face.

        I see now why Eggeling and Richter were so drawn to film (motion pictures, that is) as a medium. While you can expose as long as you want to, in the end photography can only create one image – seconds or minute compressed into a single frame. Nothing near the power of the moving image.