LIGHT notes
FRIDAY
11:30am
In front of the student center, sitting on the steps under the tree. The sky is clear- the light is strong. The sun is 90º me and the leaves of the three provide flickering shade, a partial shade. It is just right. Shadows are short under objects around me; there is still a bit of haze, it feels like morning even though its the very end of it. Highlights on the smooth surfaces of the tree leaves and branches are almost white and on other objects the contrast is high between the shaded and the lit surfaces.
1:30pm
I am in the studio, room 5-414. The overhead fluorescent lights are on; I am far from the windows and blocked off from the natural light. There are skylights behind me in the hallway which I see through the glass wall. The light that I am in is homogenous, overhead and artificial while the hall has the diffuse, blue light of the early afternoon. One ray of light from the hall is scraping the glass and illuminates a rectangle of the desk behind me. If it weren’t for the corridor It would make no difference if it were day or night.
4pm
In front of the student center again, sitting on the steps but this time I am facing east because the tree’s shadows no longer shades the steps near the entrance. The shadows are longer than thy were but the contrast is still sharp, maybe even more so than earlier as the color of the light has gotten warmer and the shadows seem cooler and therefore darker. The haze is gone, the atmosphere is clear. Objects casting longer shadows appear heavier. The sun is affecting people’s behaviors. It is low on the horizon so many of us have our backs turned to it and the warmth is pleasant; but people walking towards us are facing west and the sun is hitting them directly in the face. They are all squinting. Groups that are standing up all have gravitated under the shade of the trees.
6:30
I am in the courtyard of the Edgerton graduate student housing building. There is no more direct sunlight but it isn’t dark yet. The sky is clear except for a few small, thin clouds. There are no sharp shadows, just a soft darker zone around the areas where objects meet the ground. Low contrast; but subtleties in texture and color variations are more apparent than earlier today. It is a calm atmosphere. The light is cool. The light on the western half of this courtyard is darker than on the east but the transition is almost imperceptible.
10pm
I am in my room, on my bed. Lamps on each side of the bed provide enough light for reading but keep the rest of the room in relative darkness. It is soft and warm light that floods from the top and the bottom of the lamp shades which themselves seem to glow. The only the objects receiving direct light from the flooding light cast any shadows. Still, the shadows are barely darker than the areas that are only deceiving the diffuse light. This is what might be described as an intimate atmosphere. Everything looks soft and a little fuzzy because they are surrounded by the diffuse shadows cast by the glowing lampshades.
3:pm
In my bedroom. Sadly I must admit I woke up only recently. Today id overcast, the sky is a medium gray color. My room faces south so It gets flooded with whatever light is out there. Today it is a cool light coming through the one window of the two in my room that doesn’t have it’s shade down. Shadows are fuzzy and long, the edges are diffuse. It is gray and calm, the walls look soft. There is little contrast. My husband is here with me and we have been smoking in this little room. This gives an extra softness to the atmosphere as the smoke hangs around the room and gives it a hazy glow. If I did not have a clock, I might think it was still morning.
4:35
Corner of Albany and Mass Avenue. It is raining lightly. The sky is entirely gray but unevenly so. The backdrop of the sky is very bright , almost white. In front of it, thicker clouds move- there are layers of clouds- those to the south are backlit and look darker, others have gradations, they are brighter on top and darker on the bottom. The wet asphalt reflects the light so this intersection is quite bright and everything has an even light on it. Trees, cars and even people look good, almost like lit for photographs. There are few shadows, only right under cars and bushes. Streetlights and poles are partially reflected where the water on the asphalt is puddle. This is quite a beautiful scene.
5:41pm
Z. center. 2nd floor. Looking out onto the western side of the student center, facing south. The light on this floor at the gym is warm and even. The space is lit by rows of ceiling fixtures that emit onto the ceiling that reflects evenly and diffusely. There are no sharp shadows and no highlights. The dark carpeted floor absorbs the light and overall seems lighter than it really is. This gives the place a muffled sound and a safe and comfortable look. It is dark outside and through the windows, the scene is a gray blue that emphasizes the warmth of this space- the windows mirror us inside and the reflections combined with the outside create blue and orange compositions.
7pm
I am in the living room. This room is a half basement. There are windows but they are maybe 5.5 feet aboce the floor and start at the level of the sidewalk outside. We can see people’s feet and legs when they walk by. It is very dark outside. Completely overcast and the sun is probably almost down. Very little light is coming into this room right now. The little that does is dark grey and diffuse. The room is lit by my roommate’s plant lamp. It is a special fluorescent tube and this fixture holds two of them. It is dim and cool and because the bulbs are bare and ti is only 4 feet off the ground, objects in the room cast long shadows. Around the light it is a high contrast scene. From where I sit, the objects in front of me are backlit. The other side of the room is dark and grey. Blue color, which is actually quite similar to the light outside.
11:45pm
In my bedroom again, with the two bedside lamps on. The room looks brighter to me this evening because I finally unpacked and put away my suitcase, which had been sprawling its contents all over the floor. The floor is now clearer without all the stuff because it there are less shadows. Other than that the light in here is exactly the same as it was last night: low, warm and soft.
Sunday
11am
In the living room downstairs. It’s sunny outside. Beams of light come through our little sidewalk-level windows. They are very dirty so the light is diffuse and the windows themselves look like creamy white panels. The room is evenly lit even though the windows near the lamp have their shades drawn down. The plant lamp is on but is barely noticeable, because the color of the light it emits is so similar to the light coming through the windows. The room feels evenly lit, dim and cool.
1:30pm
In my bedroom. The sky is clear with occasional white puffy clouds passing by. There is no direct light coming into the room, only cool, even daylight. The sun is high in the sky. The light coming in only reaches one third of the room on a diagonal and the rest of the room is noticeably darker. The ceiling is the darkest of the six surfaces of the interior of this rectangle. Shadows are light and blurry. There are some bright highlights near the window, reflections of the sky on the glass frames of pictures on the wall, they have several shadows, two or three. They are fuzzy and overlap.
4:15pm
Winter & Washington Street, Downtown Boston. Clear sky. This street has many reflections and reflections of reflections of the sun, starting it’s way down. They bounce between the buildings of this narrow street, it’s a very dynamic scene. Unexpected areas in the relative darkness of the indirect sunlight are brightly lit; spots on the pavement, cars and asphalt pop out. Some windows look like the sun itself. High contrasts, bright highlights. This looks like a movie set.
5:10pm
Atrium of the medical building. I was walking through here and decided to stop and try to describe the light in this space because I find it quite spectacular. The sun is almost perpendicular to the top of the atrium and it’s glass front. Rays are pouring in and the façade’s mullions draw long, almost parallel shadows on the otherwise bright and warmly lit adjacent wall. Surfaces of this hall are all of light colors. The walls are white and the floor is a reflective light grey terrazzo. Bathed in this warm light everything looks creamy. The floods of light pouring in through the glass has a particular texture. I suppose it’s diffused a certain way by the glass but I can’t find words to describe it. Shadows in here aren’t very dark as so much light is being refracted and bounced around. Overall it is not very bright in this space but it is very warm and aside from the spots that are getting direct sunlight, it is an even, low contrast space.
6:15pm
143 Albany street. Facing south, sitting on a stoop outside my dorm building. The sun is almost down. Over towards the west the top of some buildings are still getting some direct light. The rest of the street is evenly lit. low contrast. The color of the light is rather warm and the atmsphere is clear. I can see the end of Albany all the way down, crisply. The sky above is a pale blue but down the street it is a bright yellow with a very slight green tint to it. The direct light hitting the buildings is an intense orange. Right around me however the colors seem pure, not tinted. There are no shadows.
Monday
9:40am
direct sunlight tries to pour into my bedroom. It is beating down on the half pulled down shade which spares my bed from the rays. The bottom half of both windows is covered- for privacy- by a shear, rough linen that flow when the sun is behind it. The shade of the top half of the window that floods the wall facing my bed remains open. A stream of bright yellow light streaks the wall at a steep angle and casts long shadows of the objects hanging there. A letter written on a 8.5×11 sheet of paper is there, held by a single pushpin around which it now curls. The sunlight passes through the page, lighting it up and reflecting the white oh the paper back on the wall, making it glow.
11:48 am.
I am sitting in the alley between the Z center and the student center building, facing Kresge auditorium. I am in the shade of the student center’s overhang. 1 foot to my right id the sharp edge of this shade and the bright volume of the midday sun. It is not yet at its apex so the shadows are longer than they will be soon. They are dark and well defined; there is a tree and a patch of bushes in front here and they are sparkling, as I look at them backlit- their leaves almost white and moving slightly in the breeze.
2:47 pm
Edgerton courtyard, facing east, half of he space is getting direst sunlight- the building is a lozenge, the western edge is casting a sharp shadow over the half that I am sitting in. A row of trees protest the two first floors of the eastern façade, leaves are still there and they shade most of the surface letting through little specs of direct sunlight. It looks quite yellow and very bright in contrast to where I am. It is a perfectly sunny day. The sky is a deep, solid blue. It looks like a sheet of paper, there is nothing beyond the tops of the buildings to give it depth. Here in the shade there is no shadow. I am in the shadow.
5:10pm
Roach library. On the second floor looking toward the stacks, daylight and artificial light are competing for this space. Reflections of the sun pour though the glass façade and bounce on the polished concrete, doubling it’s overall impact on the volume of this room. The shine is strong; the grey concrete floor has a white glowing section in the middle of the room. It gives off a cool color. Meanwhile the halogens beat down on the metallic walls on which a photo display hangs. It is a much warmer light, low and but steadily repeated all along the wall casting a long row of orange W”s .
6:51
the sun has set. I am sitting on the steps in front of the student center, facing south, the building to the west as well as some trees are glowing, bathed in an intense ping light, I guess the sun hasn’t completely set. On the lawn in front of the auditorium, the air id clear, crisp and the light is cool, mo defined shadows, a mellow light, there is enough contrast to clearly make out shapes but overall it is a low, even light coming from the clear blue sky still above.
10:40pm
On the steps of 77 mass ave. The street lams are on they are bright and white. The path towards the student center also id lit by street lamps but they are shorter, dimmer and their translucent lobes emit pink-ish colored light that is not as bright, so the street looks taller than the path. Further, the interiors of the shops in the student center are also glowing but they are emitting yellow light through their windows. The red backlights of the cars glide down the avenue, as the signals turn from a matching red to a bright green. Orange blinks in the distance. This is a very high contrast scene as all these colors are glowing against an essentially black backdrop. For a night scene, it is very colorful.
Tuesday
8:50am
In front of the student center, sitting on the planter’s rim. The sun is behind the trees and the sky is still white. There are no shadows but direct sunlight is, orange and warm, is bristling through the trees that separate this area from Mass ave. the top floor of the SC building is also orange-ish. It’s a very slightly foggy, I can see a layer between me an the main building, very light. Contrasts are low and even the edges of the trees shadows are fuzzy, soft. It is morning
11:30am
In front of the North face of the Media Lab. Facing west. The sky is bright white; a few blue clouds hang below the bright dome. The white surface of the Media Lab building is reflecting diffusely and the regular square grid on the concrete floor stands out as it draws its pattern on the floor, the light is very diffuse, there are no defined shadows. It is bright but there is little contrast. Textures show all their subtleties.
6pm
On the steps of building 10, Killian court. The sky is a light gray. Blue clouds below it move in the distance. Right above me, one shade darker, some clouds. It is bright and the air is clear. I can see well into Boston across the river. The green of the grass is extremely saturated, and stands out below and between the grey sky and the grey buildings. The trees create some darker patches of green below them but the color is still very saturated. The chips of cedar wood around their base are a deep burgundy color. It looks much more intense than usual. There are not defined shadows. It is very peaceful and beautiful.
Wednesday
6:10pm
77 Mass ave. Steps, facing west. It has been a clear sunny day. The sky above me is bright blue with a little gray. I am in the shade here but the sun is still hitting the upper third of the columns with an orange tinged light. On the other side of Mass ave, the cluster of trees creates a dark volume against the area behind it, which is still getting some direct sunlight. The orange-ish light on the entrance is of building seven seems to be reflecting back onto the avenue. I think I can notice it on people’s faces. They get warmer toned as they approach the building and cooler as they move away from it. The atmosphere is crisp. The eastern, glass face of Kresge is dark and reflects the bright orange brick of the chapel that faces it as it is turned a fiery red by the setting sun.
Thursday
9:40 am
Mass ave. On the steps of the student center that face the avenue. The light is doing lovely things to the trees; bright, almost yellow spots are clearly demarcated from the rest of the deep green lawn. Shadows are long and well defined, the light is a bright yellow, the sky is blue with one or two cotton clouds floating around. The sunlight is bright and reflects off of surfaces. The air is clear, no haze. Highlights on shiny surfaces; cars glitter as they drive along. This is a happy, good-looking morning.
4pm
In studio. The fluorescent lights were on earlier during a meeting we held at a table near my desk. When we turned them off to look at someone’s computer screen everybody sighed with relief. Those things are awful! There is plenty of light from the other overhead lamps and some daylight coming through the skylights and the window across the alley. It feel so much calmer without the overhead right above, maybe because colors don’t pop out so much, contrasts and saturation are lower so it’s more soothing. A light box has been placed behind a moveable partition to my right. The bright white light emanating from below looks mysterious, a little spooky.
5:25
Facing Mass ave and building 9; sitting on the student center steps. I was just taking some images of my site. It is the “magic” hour, the light is orange, shadows are long, leaves are translucent, windows reflect the sun… I am very frustrated. This camera is brand new and I need to first spend a little time with the manual then a little more re-learning about shutter speed and ISO ect. Digital is a different thing… Not having the limitations of a certain number of shots as well as the ability to see the results immediately really decreases my willingness to spend more time on a single shot. In addition, the new habits from taking site pictures for architecture projects are really making it difficult to concentrate on the single shot. I keep trying to describe the place instead of just feeling it and trying to capture its essence. Moreover, I have the reflex of thinking that everything can be fixed with Photoshop. None of this is conducive to the production of the single, meaningful capture of a moment in time and place. Last time I took photos in that frame of mind it was with a roll of 35mm. film, black and white. This is going to take some serious adjustment.
Friday
12:30
Mass ave, Steps of building 7. Overcast, the atmosphere is clear and it is quite bright. Shaded areas have very diffuse edges. The color of the light is cool. People look pale. The contrast is good, I can see in the darker areas like the trunks of the trees, but there are not highlights. The building reflects quite a bit, things here may seem brighter than elsewhere because of the steps reflecting upwards. The sky had both a bright white dome and darker clouds below that vary in density. None is darker than anything down here.
8pm
It is nighttime and raining. It is beautiful! All the colorful artificial lights reflect, so do the shadows. Very high contrasts with a lot of highlights. It is shiny! I just got bac from taking more pictures of the site. I got a tripod. It really helps. Once I set up a frame I font’s have to think about it anmore, I can concentrate on getting the shot to come out the way I want it. I’m not there yet but it’s progress.
Saturday
12 noon.
Student Center, in front of Anna’s. Facing East. Cloudy. The sun is behind a white shield but some blue patches appear overhead. The light is bright and even and there are no shadows. The air is clear. I’ve requested some poetry from the library today, the limits of my vocabulary are staring to bore me… I took out my contact lenses and am not wearing my glasses right now. This helps me see light better in some ways, without getting distracted by details. Things look matte. Kind of soft and grey.
5pm
usual spot, student center. Figuring out the camera is taking a stupid amount of time…
the light is beautiful right now. Very simple. It is low but still cool. There is a pattern of backlit clouds in front of a baby blue sky. Shapes are outlined in white when I look towards the sun.
Monday Sept. 15th. Student center, facing Mass ave. 11:35am
It’s very bright todat. I am sitting in the shade of a tree. The page is lit but most of me isn’t. It still looks and feels like summer. I guess it still is, technically. The air hasn’t turned yet, it is still warm and heavy, Fall is crisp, it usually starts with school. I feel like I’ve described this light before.
Tuesday, 11am. I finally took the time to figure out the sittingd on my camera nad started to understand aperture and shutter speed! VERY exciting! For this, digital is priceless: being able to change a setting and immedialtly see the resultant image trains the reflexes. I took a series of night shots yesterday a and could see the effects of long exposure and small appeture on the depth of field. I took pictures of a small model on my desk. I don’t have a macro lens but with the right setting all the parts of the image that look blurry through the lens actually came out crisp. This is great! Textures can really be captured, subtleties, variations of light… today is overcast. I eant to see what can be captured in this light, it’s very soft and even.
Sat, September 20; 11:12am
Fall is here. It is still warm but some trees are starting to lose their leaves.
I’ve talken many photographs this week as “roving photographer” for the department. It’s been like a crash course in handling all types of different lights. I’ve challenged myself to stay on all manual settings and not use a flash. Monday I photographed the town hall meeting that was held in the AVT at noon where Young Ho addressed the student body for an hour. There was a beautiful stream of cool light pouring down from the skylight and reflecting off the bare white wall. There were some artificial lighting but it was very dim. It was a difficult atmosphere to capture, both in terms of color and composition.
Thursday evening was the Department lecture series. That was an entirely different situation. The room was very dark and the speaker had just a spotlight on him. ISO helped to keep him in focus.
My awarness of color has bee hightened as the color correction settings have been throwing my images to both extremes of coolness and warmth. It is unsettling how much that can change the feeling of an image, it can completely obliterate a hard won balance of all other settings…
Sunday
Until yesterday I was waiting for my copy of “the language of landscape” to come through the mail. I finally decided to check it out from the library and start the reading I was already behind in.
Thinking about the meanings of shapes is a wonderful complement to the other courses I am taking this term: shape grammars and computational design. These courses also emphasize a deeper reading of shapes but in a completely different way: without history or narrative but as elements with embedded potential. I do not yet have a good grasp of this but I know there are interesting complementarities in these to different ways of looking. They both profess a deepening of the act of looking as a mode of reading and knowing- taking in and acquiring fact and understanding of what is, was and could be.
On a personal note; reading the Language of Landscape at this point in my life reminds me of the proverb about the teacher appearing when the student is ready. I spent all of my life in two dense cities with layers of history, social structures, cultural influences, namely Paris and New York City. I never thought much of the world outside of them. I had however noticed an undeniable and complex relationship between the natural and the artificial within these places and the distinction had never seemed like a clear one to me. The city exists and is shaped by it’s “natural” conditions: Paris is a basin, NYC is an island. Their respective form is as much a consequence of those conditions as the shape of a tree is a consequence of its relation to the wind, light and its water source. The city is organic on so many levels.
This summer I got married to an American man from California. For out honeymoon we flew from NYC to San Francisco and rented a car to drive back to the east coast with. For three weeks I experienced the road through the American landscape; I saw and felt more than I am yet equip to understand but one thing is now very clear for me: I want to know more and see better.
