Week #7 Night at the most magical and not so magical place on earth

Downtown Disney at night.
As we walked through the bustling evening crowd of the most magical place on earth, I came upon this scene. It was a well layered combination of arcs of color and structures of different height.
it was a welcoming vision, and felt invited to explore further. with a circular outdoor cafe placed in the center of the pathway encouraged passerbys to either grab a bite or get corralled along side the cafe, bringing them closer to the surrounding stores and restaurants. The lighting underscored this concept, with drawing your eye up, and down, and around, giving everyone a place to want to go check out. It was a good balance of lighting without drenching the space with an artificial daytime feel, but allowing the night to give the area safe mystery. Even though it was crowded and full of stores and props and shops, and performers, it never felt suffocating, it felt fun and exciting and made me want to hang out as long as I could with so much to see and do without feeling overwhelmed.

The shop that I went into with a successful lighting story was the one pictured above. Overhead lighting mixed with hidden uplighting, mixed with spotlights, mixed with sconces would seem to me like an insane way to light a space, however with washes of green tint over the ceiling lights, well directed spotlights appropriately placed on the products that are being featured, well hidden uplighting coming from behind wall trim gave the space a very warm feel with cream colored ceilings and walls, wood trim and thick wooden posts gave the overall space a homey feel that allowed me to picture any of these products to look just as good if not better in my own home. you felt relaxed and cozy with tall ceilings and shiny products that you or someone you know MUST have. i wanted to linger and bask in the natural feel of the store... until i looked at a price tag... :)

The store with the least successful lighting package was some horrible sandwich shop squeezed out to the edge of the downtown area... like a forgotten stepchild. the outside was lit well with strings of white xmas lights, probably up year round, however the inside looked clinical and even prompted me to say.. out loud... "oh this is terrible"... which got me some awkward stares from several of the patrons. in the pic the wall looks like a myriad of a jaundice yellow to a sad mint green, out to a dirty eggshell white. the tray ceilings didn't help with the feeling of being in a 17th operating room with only lite coming down on you, directly from above. it made the place look dirty and unorganized, it highlighted the imperfections on the walls and announced the smudge marks of a high traffic area, reminding me of germ covered children touching everything after having old cherrios in their mouth, i wasn't in their long enough to notice more, i snapped the shot and got out ASAP back to the outdoor area that i was enjoying. i imagine it was going for a streamlined look of a 1990's minimalist banana republic feel, but it felt more like a kmart that sat on a pottery barn.