I THINK ABOUT LIGHT

How an awareness of light (intensity, color temperature, quality, direction, source) affects my everyday experience and informs the work I do in film For as long as I can remember I have been hyper-aware of light as a physical object impacting the space I am in. Sometimes the quality of light I encounter is not striking enough to grab my immediate attention, but if asked, I can tell you exactly what's "happening" with the light in any space. And I can do it in precise detail. You need these details to capture the specific nuance of how light is behaving at any given time. As a filmmaker you often need to tap your light memories, so I keep a pretty good record of those too. Like the cloud forms in Joshua Tree that got lit on fire by the setting sun. Or the light on people's faces before a thunderstorm. Or at dusk. Light also makes designs; on walls, facades, faces. It changes color and angle depending on the season and the source. And finally, different kinds of light make you feel different things. Someone can be jumping up and down for joy- but if they're doing it in soft white pockets of light that wheeze in through the window, it's not quite the same as if lines of blazing hard light are crashing in. Once you become sensitized to light and it's affect on things, there really is no going back. It's always talking at you. In my filmmaking I am always thinking about how I can use light as an expressive tool; whether it's to put the viewer in a very specific time and place, or to make them feel a certain way about the subject or the scene.

BOOKS TO READ
Ansel Adams, "The Camera."

some MOVIES TO WATCH that use light as a storytelling device
"RED" by Krystof Kieslowski
"Klute" by Alan Pakula
"Fame" by Alan Parker
"Shoot the Moon" by Alan Parker
"Manhattan" by Woody Alan
"The Godfather Series" by Coppola
"The Conformist" by Bertolucci
"ET" by Steven Spielberg

and the documentary "Visions of Light" about some of the worlds leading cinematographers

some PHOTOGRAPHERS TO LOOK AT in whose work the poetics of light are explicit
Gregory Crewsden
Ansel Adams
Sally Mann
Keith Carter
Edward Steichen
Joel Meyerowitz