Week 6: steam

steam

This picture is in my bathroom right after I got out of the shower the other day. I felt kind of ridiculous sprinting to my room to get my camera after I noticed the steam but I realized that I only had a couple minutes before it dissipated. This turned out to be true because I only got about 3 frames that had thick enough steam for my lens to focus on. It immediately reminded me of Yasmin's light blog in her kitchen, only that was smoke rather than water. It still seems so to evoke similar feelings of peacefulness and calm. The feeling is ethereal, magical and yet fleeting. 

Anyhow, It's fascinating to me that the beam of light is actually creating a shape. Based on where the light is falling, an abstract shape is developing. The steam would have existed without the light, but the beams completely determined where the vapor was lit and therefore the shape of the object. I feel this is especially pertinent as I move forward in our unit on dance lighting and I am thinking about form and how light can shape it. 

In this case, the lighting is coming from up above and behind, and is casting down upon it. The shape seems very three dimensional to me. I'm not sure what the steam would have looked like if the light was coming from the same angle that I was, but I think it would have flattened it out. 

Also, this photograph makes me think about on-stage smoke. We are going to have on-stage smoke in A Christmas Carol, and I get excited about the prospect about the shape and dimension it is going to give to the floor. It makes me wonder how exactly one goes about lighting on stage floor smoke. My guess is shins. Side light seems as though light coming from low side could give this same three dimensionality.