look at your work at night

[sitelights]

Over the years it has happened that lighting crews from other companies (usually irrigation company workers daylighting as lighting installers) were doing a job in an area near one of our projects. I always wander over to chat them up during a break and my usual first question would be "How do you like night work?" This would invariably draw a blank look followed by "What night work?". Oddly, many lighting jobs are "completed" without an after dark critique or the changes, deletions, additions or fine-tuning that a critique might engender. I suspect that for the installers the fact that all the fixtures lighted-up when the system was turned on to test it in daylight was the mark of a successful installation. I also suspect that the client, so enthralled by what I term "the first night effect" (when you've had no lights almost anything looks good) signed off with no opportunity to become accustomed to the effects for a few nights and have, perhaps, second thoughts about it. To me lighting designers/specifiers that don't look at their own work (and everyone else's) would be like photographers not developing the film they shoot. How can you possibly learn anything about outdoor lighting if you don't work nights?