Thematic Photographic - Vibrant

Carmi at Written, Inc., posts a photographic challenge each week called Thematic Photographic - this week's theme is "VIBRANT."  What's vibrant? It can be color, a person, a scene, a moment that moves your soul.

As always, click any pictures to "embiggen"

I was thinking of vibrant, saturated color and went to find these photos I took earlier this summer - this is a backstage sneak peak during a rehearsal of a show.

Since I last worked hands-on with theatrical lighting, technology has outpaced my knowledge. Now LED stage lighting fixtures are common on stage. They can give an intense color boost to a show and at the same time lower power consumption.

LED backdrops or cycloramas can be programmed to display any image a designer can conceive - like this Rorshach- like blot behind the musicians. The animation on the backdrop along with the motorized lights' sweeping beams make  a show somehow organically alive, swirling and pulsing with color and motion.

But as I continued to look at these photos of vibrant, glowing colors in the dark, I began to look more closely at the spaces - both dark and lit - beyond the stage.

Here, viewed from stage left, as the performers glow beneath the lights, technicians work in the wings - at the monitor mix desk, or packing boxes, or re-arranging equipment, unconcerned by the fantasy world just beyond.

Another kind of vibrancy is the sound - the almost animal loudness of the music, echoing in the dark hall, vibrating at such a low frequency it commands your pulse.

It's a not a show, it's a rehearsal, so even though the stage is bathed in beams of intense, vibrant color, the empty floor yawns implaccably before them, and the stage seemed diminished in the darkness.

And as you pull further back from the bright, hot core of light, the darkness deepens.

The indifferent darkness, where an exit light glints, a hallway fluorescent emits a feeble glow. It's just a show. All this will be gone in a matter of days, but the empty hall will remain.