Quality of Light in Los Angeles Southern California is a region known for its desert like climate and contrasting lighting. This aspect has been the object of fascination for many of its residents following this unique quality. It has been discussed to be a beauty in its own right and spectacular in other ways because of the way it shines and illuminates night and day. This phenomenon is as a result of various factors coming together to bring out an atomic quality of light, viewed across the region and especially around the greater Los Angeles area.The quality of lighting in the LA area is as a result of various contributing factors giving it a unique atomic quality. Capote (351) discusses how the light is gold over the city and Weschler (666) describes the LA afternoon light as a golden pink kind of light that comes about as a result of the combination of smog and bright white sunlight. This combination gives the area its unique configuration (color), optical illusions, obstructions and at times objects do not produce shadows.
Smog in the LA air too comes about too as various factors come together.Firstly, Weschler (668) discusses how the warm desert air traps the cool misty air brought in by winds from the pacific. This makes the air very stable in a thermo-inversion layer just above the city. From this point thus, the air remains circulating beneath this layer and the smog is trapped there.
Smog on the other hand is the relatively small particles of solid substance emitted into the air by a variety of human activity. On particular days the particles are usually very many in the air and can cause obstruction of objects to ones line of vision.Capote (354) describes the phenomenon as 24 karat sunlight light hanging everywhere like swamp moss, a true reflection of the visions. Weschler (670) continues by giving the explanation that the light emitted from the sun is bounced on the surface of these objects which usually have a diameter of half a micrometer which happens to be the as the wavelength of natural light from the sun. The sun’s light hits the surface of these microscopic objects and then the human eye causing the obstruction and blurring visual reception of distant objects.
Such kind of light can therefore be seen as atomic lighting. The concept is also responsible for the shadow less days of LA. Despite having large amounts of sun rays, objects in the area are sometimes found to be without shadows. This comes about as light is reflected from many different directions by the smog objects and thus shadows are not visible. Weschler (670) describes this phenomenon as being brought about by billions of mini moons in the atmosphere. The objects too may be responsible for preventing the shadows from being visible on other surfaces.
The minute objects and their reflections of sun rays also cause another phenomenon of duality in terms or illumination and opacity. This comes about from perceiving three dimensions light as compared to the usual two. Under normal circumstances, perception in the eyes comes from natural light bouncing of an object giving it a shadow. In the LA lighting however, this phenomenon cause one to perceive three objects which are the Object its self, its shadow and as well its reflection coming from the light bouncing off of the miniature particles.Visual perception in LA is altered through a combination of various factors. These are responsible for creating a unique sort of lighting arena which sometimes causes obstruction of lines of sight, blurry vision and colorful displays of natural light.
The concept comes about due to the suns rays being reflected from particles of smog in the air. Such lighting can be termed as atomic lighting. Works Cited: Capote, Truman. Hollywood. Weschler, Lawrence. LA Glows.
