Page 122 - Lighting Magazine June 2018

light in focus
120 enLIGHTenment Magazine | June 2018
www.enlightenmentmag.com
what others do. It’s a primary tool. What photogra- phers do is freeze light in all its myriad possibilities for us to examine and re ect upon. This split- second freezing of light tells a di erent story of time, events, and spaces and is a record of what the human eye and memory can’t collect as we remember events more as “videos” than as stills.
Photographers also make personal, profes- sional, and artistic choices based on the light quality. What be er source to consider than the photographer’s well-trained eye? There’s a value especially for architects and designers here: to ex- perience spaces without the distraction that their work demands and communicate it as a slice of time imbued with the feel of that moment.
A highly published photographer with projects ranging from gallery shows of the guitars of Jimmy
Page and the Allman Brothers to portraiture, ar- chitecture, and his own art/nature photography, for Briggs, the quality of light is always the muse, ally, and journey.
InspIratIon and LIght
“Most of the time when I’m in rooms or outside, when you have an overcast day or with the golden sunlight low in the sky, it casts a long shadow that is almost always interesting. I remember a time at a co ee shop when I had a pair of glasses on an antique wood tabletop that had texture and the sun was cascading right across the surface of the table. It cast a long shadow with the optics of the lens causing a heightened glow on the table; it was just so interesting to look at. I took iPhone shots of it,” he recalls.
“You can create something with arti cial light that causes people to have an emotional feeling about the form or texture and the light and dark of it,” he explains. “If you hit something with a strong light and it sends intense color your way, there’s feeling there. The opposite of emotion or feeling is what you get from the uorescent, low energy, cost-saving light bulbs you see in hotels. The feel- ing you’re le with is tragic, and I stay in hotels for half of the year. [Hotels] will have nice furniture and fabric and then they’ll add these bulbs! I hate the room because of the light. What I like is a nice, strong beam of light that you get out of halogen bulbs. [I also like] the vintage bulbs such as those used in the old Fresnel lights for movie sets or photo studios.”
To Briggs, the Fresnel glass with its lenticular circles immediately evokes the image of a coastal lighthouse. “It’s such an impactful light. The feel- ing that you get from that has great value. It’s a photographer’s tool to use a so light on an older face and a hard, intense, high contrast light on a young face. I do sometimes use uorescent light in photography, but it’s a giant volume of light and it needs to come from a single direction instead of all directions.”
good LIght, Bad LIght
What comes to mind when Briggs thinks of an ar- chitectural space that’s well-lit and inspiring? “In the Natural History museum in New York City, so many of the spaces have long focused spotlights on key elements in the building. They illuminate dinosaur bones or a doorway, and there’s a lot