Observations of Light

Signs.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Fri, 01 May 2009 01:57:00 +0000

I went out shooting this evening at Lake Underhill which is right by my house. The image on this post is probably one of my favorites. You will notice many aspects in this image that I love within a photograph, which includes color, contrast and shadow detail and composition.

The color is that nice golden-hour type golden light that is visible twice daily, during sunrise and sunset. The way that the top road sign effects the light to shape it around the bottom road sign is beautiful. It looks realistic and believable that this picture was taken during sunset. On top of both of those, I admire the nice blue sky in the background.

-Ken

Light and Shadows.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:19:00 +0000

I believe what makes photography unique is the balance between light and shadows. The balance between the two shows detail in the picture and makes it look realistic. In lighting for shows and concerts, the goal is to obtain adequate light on the subjects on stage.

Photography is an art form to where you can manipulate those two things in order to show emotion or aid in the storytelling process. Attached to this post are two pictures that I captured in which I believe has excellent shadow detail in them. The picture with the trees was taken in the early evening and the shadows fall very beautifully underneath.

The second image uses very nice shadow details during the sun setting. I did, however manipulate the saturation on this image as well as adjust the black levels to make the shadow details more prominent. Hope you enjoy looking at the images.

-Ken

Night Photography.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 03:38:00 +0000

As you have probably gathered by my previous posts, I absolutely adore photography. I have a mighty fine lens collection in the Nikon Digital end just aquired a Pentax K1000 film camera and I am slowly collecting unique lenses for that body.

The last couple of weeks, I have been on a real photography kick. One of my favorite types of photography would have to be long exposure night photography. I went out with both camera bodies, grabbed a few exposures with my Nikon then with the Pentax. Last night around 10pm, I went down to Lake Eola in Downtown Orlando.

The picture above was not edited, aside from the cropping. The lighting and saturation is all true in regards to how the image was captured. The camera was set on fully-manual mode with the following settings: White Balance: Fluorescent, f/4, 8 second exposure, ISO: 100

-Ken

Knowledge to Application.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:12:00 +0000

The last day we had lecture...we had a lecture explaining DMX. How it works...what it does...everything behind it.

When I went back home to Atlanta on my spring break, I had the opportunity to go back to the youth group in which I used to manage the audio / video / lighting systems. I put into practice the things I had learned in school when I was refocusing the stage lights. Granted, do to money reasons, this ministry does not have much to apply toward their lighting systems, which is fine...don't get me wrong.

I went through the little DMX system and for once it made sense of what it was doing. That was impressive. I understood what the controller units were sending through the signal cable and was able to understand better the configuration behind it.

The lights were arranged the same way that I had originally set them up...probably about three or so years ago. I decided that it was time to change out the gels and "fix" the focusing of the lamps. Hopefully, the changes that I made will help to accent the services a little.

-Ken

The Tungsten Effect.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:19:00 +0000

I was browsing through my friend's (Derek O.) Flickr page and I came across this image, and it was very appealing to me. He took this picture outside but had his camera on the "tungsten" white balance setting and the exposure came out blue looking. This is one of my absolute favorite pictures ever, I adore the coloring of it. It works well with the mood for the picture.

Our eyes are amazing, in that they can instantly "white balance" for us without any signs of it. Even with a high-end camera, you can see the effects of it shuffling trying to evaluate what is true white. Good job, sir!

Photo Taken by Derek Overstreet: Atlanta, GA

Night Photography: Downtown Atlanta.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:17:00 +0000

Yesterday, I spent most of the day with my good friend, Derek who lives in Atlanta, GA. We started off the day taking pictures at Piedmont Park in Downtown. From there we went and had dinner and went to the spot pictured above for some long exposure night pictures.

The panoramic photo above is one my my most favorite images captured yesterday. The photo is shown just as captured by the camera, no manipulations in post. It was a 20 second exposure. My favorite parts of the photograph are the colors in the sky and basic lighting within the picture. I love the streaks going through the streets given by the automobiles traveling on the interstate.

The street lamps are giving a very nice warm light in the scene. That mixes well with the ambient light in the city and coming from where the sun is setting.

Until next time,
-Ken

Making Due in Times of Trouble.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:08:00 +0000

About two weeks ago on a Saturday, we...the Broadcast Team at First Baptist Church of Orlando was preparing for the Saturday evening service. As a surprise to all of us, suddenly, the lighting system failed, just minutes before the services were scheduled to begin. After the lighting designer fiddled with the 15-year old system and realized that he was limited on his options, he quickly began brainstorming on what he could do in order to get light into the auditorium.

Minutes before the service began, they had redone the trusses about the stage which allowed for light to be on the stage from the intelligent lights. Luckily, this brought enough light to the stage in order for the service to work and allowed for adequate camera usage. During the night, a select group of people worked diligently and re-hung some rented instruments from our rental house. Those instruments and the ones that we had on stage allowed for adequate light to be on stage for broadcast the next Sunday morning.

In the live event business, you never know when something is going to malfunction or fail. You constantly have to be thinking and always have a back up plan in the case that something fails or breaks on you...mid show or even moments before. Always remember the little things...such as putting a backup battery on consoles and interfaces. This is one of the simplest solutions that could solve very minor problems.

-Ken

Photos Taken by Scott Link: Orlando, FL

DMX and Amber Drift.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:01:00 +0000

Today, we had a very informative lecture on lighting protocols. I have
always known of DMX, but never really knew too many specifics of it.
It was a very informative lecture. It is amazing to realize that all
of that data for 512 DMX channels are passing through one cable.

This evening after lecture, I joined a buddy of mine down at Universal
for the evening. We played in the park for a bit and near the end of
the evening we went to go and ride "The Revenge of the Mummy." While
waiting in the line, I found myself looking around at the practical
lights through out the waiting lines.

The lights were just a basic light with...probably a 500 watt bulb in
them. They were dimmed down and had a very warm amber light
illuminating from them. While waiting in the line, something went awry
with the ride. They turned the house light up the entire way, and it
was interesting to see that the what was very warm amber now became
very white...very interesting to see the changes in color temperature
with the intensity of the light changing.

-Ken

Full Sail Live Lab.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:57:00 +0000

So tonight when I was done with class, I stopped by a Live Lab in FSL1 and it was pretty cool! It sounded great...lighting was good and they were off to a good start as far as I could tell!

Ken

Sunlight.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:29:00 +0000

I was sitting in my apartment programming a website and I saw the image to the right the window. It was absolutely beautiful! I went out and took some pictures of the sun casting light through the trees in a little lawn right outside.

In essence, these images reflect the blog post from yesterday with golden hour. The textured light coming through the trees has a very "golden" color. Simply beautiful. I also captured a few other images that I thought were definitely worth sharing!

We had a very interesting lecture today by our instructor, Susan about lighting instruments. Even though I have dealt with theatrical lighting before both prior to coming to Full Sail and using them in the Film program, I realized today that there is much that I do not know about them. I adore Source4's...in fact I even used them to get a specific type of lighting in our 16mm film project. I was inundated with how they performed in the situation that we used them in. Of course, this video can be seen on my website, www.kintmiller.com. To see it, navigate to "Demo Reel" portion and watch the clip "Sticks and Stones." They were used in the fight scenes to give a light feeling of a fighting arena. I have lab at 1am, and I am really looking forward to playing around with the gear.

Well, that is all I have for now, Check back for more insights of my light observations! Will for sure have more to come!

-Ken

Golden Hour.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:57:00 +0000

This evening, I went on a walk through the park on Lake Underhill Road, right beside 408. It was around the time that the sun was setting and it was a beautiful sight. I have a photography background...and my favorite time to take pictures would have to be Golden Hour. Golden Hour is when the sun is rising / setting and a nice golden light is cast upon the "world."

It is a great time for portraits...and adds a nice look and feel to the captured images. When the sun was past the horizon, the sky has a very nice "purpleish-blue" tint to it.

-Ken

Introduction.

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Miller, Jr.) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:27:00 +0000

Welcome!

As an assignment for my class, Introduction to Lighting Concepts at Full Sail University, we have to have a journal that we post out observations of light in for a month. This is what the purpose of this blog is. Hopefully, I will be able to keep it running after I complete the course and post to it here and there.

Thank you guys for reading, and I hope that you find it entertaining!

-Ken