It's a patriotic start to July 2012 for Solus!

Solus Lighting LTD started off it's busiest month yet with some patriotic flair!  We were the chosen lighting vendor for a private party held on the east side of Cleveland.  Red, white & blue with stars was the theme of the affair.  There were two tents on site for the event.  The main tent was a clear top tent, where guests enjoyed dinner & the band.  Solus handled feature lighting of the food stations in this tent.

The second tent, which was used for cocktails and featured a bar in the center, was a first for us here at Solus Lighting.  The canopy of this tent was red, white and blue.  This is something rarely seen around Cleveland, Ohio and we were stoked to be one of the firsts to light it.  We enhanced the tent canopy by matching the color of the canopy with the color of our lighting and the results were loved by all guests.

Stay tuned for more from Solus.  Next up for us is the Cleveland SCORE awards ceremony, where our Lead Designer Maureen E. Patterson has been chosen to be a keynote speaker.  Later that same day, come and visit us at BarRoom in downtown Cleveland where we will be serving up some special offers at the Bridal & Beyond Productions Summer Bridal Bash 2012!

Where have you been???

I'm not sure where you have been, but a little town called busy is where we have been.  Solus Lighting has lit events in three different cities within Ohio so far in June, and we are gearing up for a Florida show coming up soon.  Our first stop was in Sandusky...

A wedding reception featuring uplighting, one custom gobo on the dance floor, one custom gobo projected above the bar in the tent on the patio and landscape lighting along the 18th fairway of the golf course.  Fabric ceiling and flowers by Kirk Miller Floral Design.  Check out more pictures here.

Our next stop was in Columbus.  We were providing string light swags on a roof top pool deck for a wedding reception.  Unfortunately, the weather was too windy and so for safety purposes hotel management moved the reception inside to the ballroom.  Check out the chairs in the pic below tipped up, linens were flying everywhere!  We stopped early on at load in to snap a couple of pictures.  The finished product would have looked amazing.  If this were your wedding reception, what kind of lighting would you have wanted on the pool deck?  We have other photos of our string light designs & much more on our website!

We are now back home and working in Cleveland, and back to transforming the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.  Uplighting of the skeletons, along with the pattern projection over the entire space is enough light to be able to turn off the existing lights.  The feel is a very intimate private party amongst the dinosaurs.  The centerpieces for one of the wedding receptions were all different dinosaurs & other animals that are featured at the museum statues...pretty cool!  You can see other pictures of the entire space here.

The bride from one of our CMNH weddings had this to say about us, "This was the easiest and most pain-free part of my wedding - Maureen handled everything and I almost had no thinking to do which was great!  It was off my mind and the place looked AMAZING!!!"

In other Solus news...our very own Lead Designer, Maureen E. Patterson, was asked to be a keynote speaker at the SCORE Awards ceremony in July.  SCORE is an excellent resource for small businesses, and everyone at Cleveland SCORE is awesome to work with.  Stay tuned for more on this!

Uplighting level 2

Way back in May of 2011, we wrote a blog titled Uplighting.  This was a very basic introduction to the how and what elements of uplighting.  As we have gotten feedback from you through out the past year, we thought that we would take some time to talk about different styles of uplighting.  Ok, there are several different types of lighting fixtures out there.  We already talked about incandescent vs LED lighting fixtures in our blog here.  This blog is going to focus on which type of lighting fixture is best to use to achieve the expected look, no matter if the fixtures are incandescent or LED.

There are all different types of beam spread that we can get out of lighting fixtures (i.e., how wide the beam of light is projecting up the wall).  Some lighting fixtures achieve this by what type of lamp is installed, while other fixtures achieve this by what type of lens is installed. Most lighting fixtures are flexible as to how we get different beam spreads out of one fixture, some are built by the manufacturer as a fixed beam spread fixture.  A couple of different looks can be achieved with uplighting.  In the shots below, we used lighting fixtures with a narrow beam spread.  This gives a striped look to the wall.

The striped look isn't for everyone.  With a lighting fixture with a wider beam spread, we can achieve what most imagine when they think of uplighting and that is to wash the entire wall with color.  In the shots below, we used the wider beam spread lighting fixtures.

As you can see, uplighting is not just throwing light up the side of a wall.  There is an art, as well as a fair amount of technical knowledge needed to get the correct fixture in the correct space to achieve a certain look.  There are many venues where it is appropriate to use several different types of lighting fixtures for uplighting the space.  You can count on us to get it right, every time.  Visit our website for more information.

Solus Lighting goes international

Solus Lighting LTD was recently hired to provide technical lighting support for a temporary exhibition in Tel Aviv, Israel.  We completely transformed an empty space into something everyone there was excited about.  The venue was in an old building on the site of Ha Tachana.  Ha Tachana was an old train station, that was in the middle of the railway traveling between Jaffa & Jerusalem.  Ha Tachana existed even before the city of Tel Aviv was built, and is now a bustling tourist site filled with shops & restaurants.  It is also the temporary home for Bodies...The Exhibition, produced by Premier Exhibitions.

We were able to travel a bit before we started to get to work on the rig and will be sharing more pictures on our website and Facebook pages.  For now, here is an introductory taste of some of things we got to see and work on!

This is a shot of the Dead Sea.  At 423 meters below sea level, it is the lowest place on earth.  The name comes from the fact that it is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world, it is 8.6 times saltier than the oceans, and no animal can live in it's environment.  One other fun fact, people cannot sink in the Dead Sea - we all just float because of the denseness of the water from the salt.

After we floated out of the Dead Sea, we continued our travels into Jerusalem.  The photo above is of the Garden of Gethsemani, which is a place located on the Mount of Olives.  The garden now features beautiful landscaping, however the olive trees that are seen here are over 2000 years old.

Night time view of part of Tel Aviv.  Tel Aviv is open 24 hours a day, known as the "city that never sleeps".  It is also renowned for it's miles and miles of beautiful beaches on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Ha Tachana, the site of the venue, was one block from the Mediterranean Sea.  So most of the crew would have lunch on the beach.

Here is the venue before we started the transformation into the exhibit.  This building is known as Hanger 20 on the grounds of Ha Tachana.

Day two into the install and the truss structure is up and ready for the lighting hang.

This shot shows the rig coming together in the front half of the exhibition.  All specimens, descriptions and signs were all lit for visibility of the guests.  We used several different types of fixtures to light the exhibition.  All served their own specific purpose of lighting specific elements of the exhibition.

That's all we can show you here.  If you are abroad and would like to see the exhibition, more information can be found here.  If you would like more information or would like to see a Bodies...The Exhibition here stateside visit their website for current show locations.

Wedding season is here!!!

It's the beginning of May and it is 79 degrees in Cleveland, Ohio.  Wedding. Season. Is. Here!  We were thinking that now is a good time to offer up some links to help brides-to-be with the final details, and also for the not so immediate brides-to-be with where to get started.

Welcome to Solus Lighting LTD's Wedding Resource Blog Post!  Let's dive right in...

Today's Bride has an excellent articles section of their website, that has categories for anything that you forgot to think about, but they did not!  Everything from ideas about decorations, to tips on favors and guest accommodations.  They even have a section titled "Tips & Tricks" with a link to an article about how to remember names - we have read that one a couple of times!  You can find all of their great resource articles here.

Another great wedding resource page is on The Knot website.  The Knot also has a wedding planning section on their website.  Here you can find out about the current wedding color trends of the season, as well as the top bridal beauty dont's.  They also have links for many many other topics such as destination weddings and reception ideas, just to name a few.  You can find their resources here.

We round out this week's blog with Wedding Connections website.  Wedding Connections has an article page on their site where you can find tips, themes, traditions, guides and articles.  You can find tips on planning 24 months from your wedding date all the way up to last minute wedding day details.  You can find their article page here.

We hope that this will be helpful in either getting started for or putting the last finishing touches on your big day!

It's benefit week at Solus Lighting LTD

Solus Lighting LTD is proud to be a part of two excellent benefits this upcoming weekend.  The first will happen on Saturday 04.21.12 at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History with the Trout Club Banquet & Auction.  This event will support various conservation and environmental programs related to cold water fisheries.  Registration and more information can found here, on the CMNH website.

The second event is happening on Sunday 04.22.12 at Signature of Solon Country Club.  The event is the Bridal & Beyond Productions Spring Bridal Fair, with those proceeds going to benefit Wish Upon A Wedding.  Wish Upon A Wedding provides weddings and vow renewals to couples facing terminal illness and serious life altering circumstances.  Registration can be found here, on the Signature of Solon website or here, on the Bridal & Beyond Productions website.

Wether you support wildlife or are a bride-to-be or anything in between, come on out this weekend and support two great causes!

Tent season is right around the corner

When spring is in the air, it gets us thinking about what we refer to the late spring/summer/early fall seasons as "tent season".  Having a wedding reception or any kind of party for that matter in a tent is popular this time of year.  Your awesomely talented and creative staff members at Solus Lighting LTD can light a tent like no one else!  Our staff has dozens of years of combined experience in the professional lighting industry and half of that was spent summer after summer perfecting our tent lighting techniques.

We have blogged before about how we can do all of the same things in a tent that we can do in a traditional venue.  This includes, but is not limited to, uplighting, custom pattern projections (gobos), ceiling washes, string lights and paper lanterns.  When choosing a tent for the site of the celebration, there are several options available.  There are clear top tents, solid top tents, false (fabric) ceilings can also be installed in tents.  Fabric ceilings in tents transform the entire space and can be lit in several different ways.  The fabric ceiling can be lit so that ceiling feels high and unobtrusive or they can be lit to bring the space down for a more intimate feel.

Whatever the visions are for the dream tent party, we can turn them into reality!