Internationally renown poet Nikki Giovanni performs at West Side Theatre in Gary, Indiana. A special technique was used to gel the fixtures that front-lit the podium.

When the West Side Theatre Guild booked internationally renown poet Nikki Giovanni to headline a speaking engagement, I was asked to create a classy, clean lighting design that would not overpower the artist, yet still stand on its own as a visually attractive element of the production. After kicking around some ideas with assistant director Rashaad Cherry, we quickly agreed that using the theater’s white Austrian curtain as a backdrop was the way to go (it’s kind of hard to beat the look of a well-lit Austrian curtain when you’re looking for classy).

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Gavit High School varsity girls basketball team member Hattie Andrews poses during practice at the school in Hammond, Indiana. The 6’3″ sophomore has been playing basketball since the third grade.

As a lighting designer, one of the best things about location film and photography work is the always-challenging task of transforming an everyday space into an attractive environment for the lens. More often than not, I enter new locations flying blind, having never visited the space before. I never know exactly what I’m getting into, which often causes a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Have I brought enough equipment to light the space, and more importantly, the subjects within? For video shoots, is there enough power? Will I be fighting bright light from windows during a daytime shoot? Can I capitalize on any existing fixtures within the building to create something special in an otherwise bland location?

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The lighting and set design for “Lyrics 14: The Best Of…” combined modern technology with home-brew creativity to achieve big-budget looks with limited resources.

When I started the reincarnation of this blog back in June, my goal was to feature entries about all the areas I work in, not just photography. Photography entries, as with the old blog, have become the most prevalent, simply because photography provides an immediate visual record of itself. If I want to share a photo shoot, I automatically have photos to post here. This isn’t always the case with lighting design, or more specifically, with the process of lighting design. I have to make a conscious effort to document the process of lighting a show if I know I want to feature it here, and I tried to do just this when lighting “Lyrics 14: The Best Of

The Las Vegas Strip as seen from Frenchman Mountain in Las Vegas, Nevada, Friday, October 22, 2010. The LDI trade show and convention was recently held in Las Vegas.

Last weekend, while strolling amongst the beautiful girls, the flashing lights, and thick smoke in Las Vegas, I got the overwhelming urge to gamble. I didn’t want to gamble on a card game or sporting event, however. I wanted to gamble on which new light fixture on display at LDI 2010 would change the game in the lighting industry over the coming months. Those lights and that smoke I experienced, they were coming from the hundreds of booths on the LDI trade show floor, not from a seedy casino. As for the beautiful girls, well, they were pushing some sort of rigging accessories, I think. Read More…