I am the self proclaimed king of Daylight Lighting. Every year I get a call for my expertise in lighting outdoor concerts while the sun is still up. I realize you are either laughing or shaking your head in wonder, but I am serious.
Read More »The more photos you take, the better your chance is of getting a winner. Unexpected, isn’t it? Shockingly, most people expect to pull out their… Read More »The Law of Averages
Read More »I recently attended a Cross Canadian Ragweed show with a lady friend of mine. I heard of the band once while I was on tour with EastonAshe in Indiana. We were at load in and a song came on talking about “folks in Oklahoma roll their joints all wrong.” The lyrics began to humor me and the rest of the song is a riot to boot.
Read More »I love doing shows with no moving lights on occasion. Nowadays it seems like such a rarity that I get to do this.
Read More »Hey everyone I'm back with a couple blogs this week. I'm going to be playing catch up on some stuff for awhile because a lot has been going on! For this week I'm leaving a two part blog to pay homage to everyone I've meet near and far along the way in my career so far that I owe a definite thanks to for being such great influences, family, friends, and mentors. Enjoy!
Read More »After my move from Maryland to Arizona with the boys is when things got really busy with me. Matt Brown of Guitar Center- Peoria Ave. got us on our feet with sound and light initially (before I knew about ClearWing and Four Wall). I first started going through Four Wall Entertainment getting my gels together from Roscoe special thanks to Nancy Tallman for her help at the time and pointing me in the right direction which led to ClearWing Lighting who have been my go to guys ever since Adam (LTP vs. HTP), Dave, Nick (Repair Extraordinaire), Tiffany, Ashley, Seth, Christian, and Jeff you all rock and have helped me learn so much technically and aesthetically much respect.
Read More »
I’ve been hearing some disturbing stories lately. And I’m getting upset. It seems like its becoming normal for touring shows to fire lighting techs. On several occasions in the last two years, I’ve heard stories of whole crews being replaced. I get calls from people who hate working with techs that I know do great work for me. I don’t get it. Is it the new generation of youngsters and their attitudes? Or the fact that many techs don’t know what they’re doing these days?
Read More »High-tech users means the lighting industry can find profits in low-tech gear.
The National Systems Contractor Show (NSCA), which was held in Orlando in mid-March, reflects an industry trying to figure itself out. If you didn’t know what the show was about — putatively, commercial AV systems design and installation — and you were suddenly, magically plopped down in the middle of the hall, it could take you the better part of the day to figure it out from the hodge-podge of technologies that make up media systems these days.
Read More »
You’re going to work with it a lot, so it’ll help to choose a console that matches your style.
As new digital lighting fixtures and media servers are introduced into our industry, there is a crucial need for an easy way to control what can be a very complicated set of video functions. This is where the lighting console layout can hinder or help the programming process. How a personality for a digital lighting fixture or media server is implemented into a lighting console has a tremendous impact on the performance of the lighting programmer.
Wireless DMX has been around for more than a decade now. The idea is to use it when you cannot run a control cable from the lighting console to your lighting fixtures. For instance, you may have multiple lighting fixtures located on several rooftops and one console located in a van in a parking lot of one of the buildings.
Read More »
San Diego’s U.S. Grant Hotel’s $52M Renovation left the architects asking for more.
It’s an unusually cold, nasty winter night in San Diego, and Tony Hansen is 11 stories up on the roof of the historic U.S. Grant hotel. He’s with the architects spearheading a $52 million renovation, and he is showing them some possible solutions to lighting the exterior of the building. All he has to do is flip the right switch on his computer to turn on the LEDs hung on the outside of the building to produce the right color of amber as specified. His fingers slip, and the lights come up a different color.
Read More »When the editor of PLSN asked me if I would be interested in writing a review for the new Chauvet QWash LED, my mind raced back to my days backstage, when my crew and I would take advantage of slow moments between shows to give our flashlights the Pepsi Challenge. I would pit my Mag-Lite against anyone else’s flashlight to see which was stronger and at what distances. On one occasion, a board op came up with his LED flashlight, swearing that his could finally dethrone the hoss, and it did…at short range. But the Mag stood strong at longer distances, such as from the floor to the grid 60 feet above. Even at that distance, I could easily make out the details in the cables suspending the rigging. His LED didn’t even provide a light pool at that range.
Read More »