Week #6 - Christmas lights

This picture doesn't capture it too well, but these are the Christmas lights that I have strung up on the railing of the balcony of my apartment. Stringed lights have started to pop up all around the apartment complex and it makes me so happy! I have had my lights up for a long time, not just recently with the upcoming holiday season. I love bright colors. I have an orange desk, pink phone, red tv, purple guitar... you get the idea. I put these lights up as an expression of my personality, which I think of as bright and colorful. This example shows yet another purpose of light. In a lot of the pieces we have created in class we have used different colors to represent different characters, like I did with Andrew in my midterm project. I think it is quite a useful lighting technique to have a different color/feeling for different characters. It makes things very clear, usually, for the viewer.

Another thing this makes me think about is how much we use light in various ways at different times of year. Christmas lights all over the place in winter, putting a candle into a pumpkin at Halloween to create an eerie glow, birthday candles on a cake to make a wish on our birthdays. Light is so much more a part of important occasions than I have really ever thought of before. Not only is it the warmth of a fire that can bring people together on a cold winter night, but it also the warm glow. I think people tend to naturally gravitate to light. I know this post seems a little bit ramble-y, but I guess my point is that I think light has the power to bring people together, to help us express ourselves, and to help us celebrate life's occasions.