Shadle Aquatic Center sculpture, Spokane, Washington

Last week, one of the News releases I got from the City of Spokane, listed about 6-7 art objects, which either had been, or would be, installed around Spokane. Seemed to me an opportunity to try and capture these art objects, if possible, after dark. I emailed my contact at City Parks, and they were informed of the effort, in case any of the images could be helpful to Spokane Parks.

The first visit was to the Shadle Aquatic Center, on West Wellesley. This art (sculpture), contained three ten foot tall objects, standing side by side. The surfaces of the sculptures were fairly shiny, so it appeared that this would actually help reflect any projected light from a colored flashlight lens. Bad news was, that almost directly overhead was a high-pressure sodium streetlight. It totally bathed the entire area in orange light, and it so overwhelmed the color schemes, I thought the project might be doomed from the start.

Each of the parts of the sculpture were bathed in a different color light, although I was unable to use amber because of the streetlight. I used regular white light on the center of the sculpture, although it turned to gold because of the streetlight. Red was fairly consistent with the actual colors used, and blue was almost totally eaten up by the direct light from above (streetlight).

Putting all of the bracketed images on the computer screen the next day, gave me some hope that I could make my way out of the mess created by the streetlight. One way was to create a layer of totally desaturated color. That layer became black and white, and it eliminated all of the intense color from the streetlight on the surroundings. I was able to add additional layers for the colored objects in the sculpture, and as a result I got rid of the streetlight impact on the area, and was able to display the colors used on each part of the sculpture.

Sometimes this night stuff cam drive you crazy, but if you don't get in a hurry, and the tripod gives you a very stable platform, you can just keep shooting as you make the adjustments at the scene.

http://www.spokanenightscenes.com/shadle.htm

JDM