Nathan Art

Nathan had a good time on our furniture-less back porch. He created his first chalk drawings:



The Result:



He heard something (probably a car passing or something) - the sunlight shined at the perfect spot:



We've noticed more and more that Nathan prefers doing things with this left hand... Picking up the chalk, (trying) to use forks, turning on/off light switches. Looks like he's gonna be a lefty like his dad. Welcome to never having left handed scissors in kindergarten - the special green handled ones.

Oh yeah, here is some video of Nathan dancing:



(and for the record - we cut our back lawn a few hours after this video was made)

Install Awesomeness

(this is my first time describing what I did for an install - so have mercy on my descriptive abilities)

Just got done designing/supervising the installation of new lights at Southside Assembly....

Their old setup was 12 or so pars on a Strand CD-80 dimmer pack controlled by a NSI memory console...

Overall they wanted more lights (obviously) for normal worship services and special events. The pastor wanted the ability to change the way the stage looked for each sermon series. We installed 16 Leviton LEO's for specials and a pile of pars for color washes and Altar lights.

We put LED's (Chauvet Colorado 1's) along their back wall... Those things are bright...

This is what you can do with 6 led's:







The Colorado's were so bright you can even make red (usually the dimmest LED color) show up on their black wall with full stage and house lights.



As you can see you can do a variety of looks with a few led Pars. If they wanted to - they can take the LED's off their back wall and set them on the ground accenting props, musicians, etc. We also put two of the LEO's midstage to give them the ability to throw breakups on their back wall... Each sermon series they can spend $24 to buy a new pair of gobos for their back wall. The streaks against the wall is temporary - the church is eventually going to buy some spandex and other random soft goods to vary the look up more.


Another thing we added was 6 Par's and 2 Lekos for Altar and pulpit lighting on two new electrics farther in the hosue... The pastor would walk in front of the stage and have no light on him - this would greatly upset their video guy that is trying to stream the service for the internet and DVD sales.



(I don't have a picture of this) I spec'd a Fat Frog to replace their lighting controller - they wanted a contoller that would one day control moving lights. In fact - the Fat Frog was recently discontinued - Southside has one of the last Fat Frogs ever made. Another random upgrade was putting their chandeliers on dimmers.... Instead of parking their house lights at full - they can dim them for video rolls and for worhsip... Pretty cool. We replaced the CD 80 with 36 channels of NSI dimming.

The last thing we added was a simple 4 channel DMX dimmer pack that sits on stage to control small stuff like uplights on their flags, Christmas tree lights, and the occasional 500 watt work light for Jesus' tomb during the last scene of a Passion Play.

Overall the system is pretty cool - I wanted a system that if I walked in the room to play with their lights, that I could have some fun and create a lot of really nice looks.

The church leadership is happy, I am happy.

Cool birthday (part 1)

Well, I completed my profile and even changed the color scheme after writing my first blog post.

A lot of cool stuff happened this week.

I turned 27 on Wednesday - I got the day off of work - me, Jenn, and Nathan had a busy day.

11:00 - met my mom and dad at Best buy - they bought us a cool digital camera for our combined birthdays.

(by the way - here is the first picture we took with the new camara)



(stunning)

12:30 - lunch @ Chilli's

3:00 - back at the house - took a birthday nap

3:45 - made this video BEFORE the Ultra Sound




4:00 - Ultra Sound Appointment

Nathan took a nap during the Ultra Sound:



(best screencap ever)

6:00ish - made this video AFTER the Ultra Sound




7:30 - stopped by New Life and said hi to some folks in youth at their annual bonfire

Here is me and Shuffle - my main youth tech:



Here is Adam Zink and Brandon Zink about to play some sweet Hillsong cover tunes - on a flatbed trailer with some hay - where is Darlene Zschech when you need her?



(no I didn't do the lights)

8:00 - Dinner @ Carabbas (steak with mushrooms, fettuccini, and really good sweet tea)

the company was nice too:



We were supposed to to see The Mates of State at Freebird but one of the band members (in the two piece band) was stuck at an airport so Jenn and I did what most good American's do when they get bored - went to Wal-Mart. I bought myself a new zip up hoodie ( I also call them emo-jackets) this year I got a red one! Then we went home....

All in all a great birthday.

The next day was awesome too... will talk about that later.

The First Post

So I finally decided to jump on the blog bandwagon. The wife and I got a nice camera for our birthday - so we can actually take pictures of stuff and write about it....

I am hoping to post some lighting stuff here with some pictures from my church work and freelance work.

Due to the poor economy - the freelance work has been few and far between.

Hopefuly I will remember my password and not get tired of this....

I had a few blog entries on the Myspace - nothing too cool - I complained a lot - I deleted a hand full of them.

I think I will actually stick with this if people actually read my little blog and respond - so America - its in your hands...

by the way...

these url's were already taken:
lighting.blogspot.com
thelightingguy.blogspot.com

Oh well - early bird catches the worm.