Accenting the Outdoors
Aug 2nd, 2010 by sophie smith
For anyone who has spent part of a lifetime experimenting with lighting, it becomes clear that the majority of the work isn’t related at all to illumination, but to learning how to play with shadow. It’s certainly true that for some instances, the main goal is to make a whole area visible. That’s how it is in the indoor spaces, in theatre houses , and other public places.
For the outdoors, however, there’s rarely a need to illuminate an entire area. The outdoor spaces have very particular challenges, and very particular possibilities for very rewarding looks that just aren’t available indoors. With wide open spaces that have pockets of interest, such as plants, statues, and fountains, landscape lights can open up a whole world of possibilities.
The entire space can be conceived of as a palette, or a series of palettes, on which to experiment with how certain kinds of light will play on the textures, and how the objects and textures will cast shadows on the area in the surround.
The principles here are actually very similar to what lighting designers in theatre work on when they’re playing with darker plays. The famous one, Macbeth , needs to have lighting that evokes both indoor and outdoor spaces, and all of these are more shadows than light. But it needn’t be mysterious, because shadows are very capable of crossing the line from the spooky into the delightfully romantic with great ease.
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