Periodically my obsession with Red Velvet cake (or Waldorf Astoria Cake, as it is sometimes known) leaves the safety of my personal life and comes across the border into my work. A few years ago, struggling to explain the value of layers of light in ways that would make it easy remember, I realized that... Continue Reading →
EXPOSURE: The Pretty Good House
What makes a pretty good house? My first exposure to the Taunton Press was as an avid reader of Sarah Susanka's The Not So Big House books. Taunton is also responsible for Fine Homebuilding (to which I subscribe and for whom I have written) and Fine Woodworking, among others. Now Taunton has published a new... Continue Reading →
Okay Lighting Design
Lighting designers are trained from birth...okay, that's an exaggeration and a cliche, so this blog post is not off to the best start. Where was I? Ah yes, lighting designers are trained to know the difference between good lighting design and bad lighting design. This morning I pondered the possibility that this embedded understanding of... Continue Reading →
THINK LIGHT: Field of (viewing) Dreams
My THINK LIGHT series is my outlet for being a lighting geek. Perhaps I should rephrase that - this is my outlet for being a lighting pseudo-geek. I do love the science, geometry, biology, psychology, and technology of light, but I am no scientist, biologist, psychologist, or technologist. There is a limit to how geeky... Continue Reading →
Exposure: The Dallas Kitchen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr0kg0PGIvE Lee Travis and his team from Wipliance released their third video shot in the ProSource Lighting Technology and Learning Center in Dallas, Texas! Lee and I discuss layered lighting in kitchens in this short video. We designed the Learning Center to share good lighting with others, and I am thrilled with this shoot join... Continue Reading →
THINK LIGHT: The Incredible Iris
A key component of human sight is the flexible iris that opens and closes the pupil, constantly adjusting the amount of light that enters the eye. I am an unabashed lighting geek. I love learning about the science, technology, art, and technique of lighting design, I dig into light and health, and I always, always... Continue Reading →
A Second Language of Light
Last week I delivered a webinar with the same title as this blog post and it was one of the hardest presentations I have done in quite some time. Change does not always come easy for me, but it is a vital part of the creative process. When I pitched the webinar idea to the... Continue Reading →
BS* + Beer Show
*BS = Building Science When Green Building Advisor and Fine Homebuilding friends asked me to join an episode of the BS* + beer show, I was honored and a little scared. Why? Because builders and lighting designers do not always get along. In retrospect, I need not have feared. BS* + Beer is a weekly... Continue Reading →
Layout Versus Design
https://www.technologydesigner.com/2020/12/10/lighting-layout-is-not-design/ I recently wrapped up my year of writing for Technology Designer, an elegant quarterly publication that also featured my stories on baths, living in place, and linear lighting. I was given an open invitation to share my final thoughts for design professionals to finish the series. I returned to one of the most common... Continue Reading →
Seven Saintly Solutions
Seven Saintly Solutions, Presented by David Warfel from DMF Lighting on Vimeo. One of the perks of starting your own company is that you get to pick your job title. At some point I decided that "Chief Evangelist of Light" (CEL) would be my own. Evangelist is a term that can have positive and negative... Continue Reading →