Enhance Your Worship Experience with Pattern Gobos
One of the most under-utilized tools in the lighting toolbox is using light to create texture in your space, or to project powerful images to engage your audience. The use of texture can dramatically increase the look of your space, bringing an illusion of depth to make your space look bigger and more three-dimensional. And lighting can be a simple way to bring simple yet powerful images to your space. From branding to projecting powerful images of the cross, light can help you engage your audience.
We've talked before about how ellipsoidal lighting fixtures produce a tight, focus-able beam of light. Many years ago, lighting designers realized that they could take this focused light, put a piece of metal with an image cut out, or glass for a full color image, at the focus point of light inside of an ellipsoidal fixture and like magic you end up with your image projected onto your destination. And so the gobo, whose name comes from GO Before Optics or Go Between, was born.
Texture
Using gobos with your lighting can create visual interest in your space, but it can also create an optical illusion of making your space feel bigger and more dynamic. There are lots of ways to do this, and one great example is pictured here from Church on the Move in Tulsa, OK. They project patterns using gobos onto their acoustical treatment to create a dynamic look around the entire room. You can also create this same look of texture in the air using haze. The particles of haze in the air serve as the canvas for the light, bringing that textured look to the air instead of on a two-dimensional surface, like in this photo from Sandals Church. (pick one, any one)
Images
The other great use for gobos is projecting images throughout your environment. Theme parks like Disney and Universal use projected light throughout their parks to create an immersive environment. They also use light to brand rides, gathering areas, or even the theme parks themselves. What does this have to do with your ministry? Imagine having your church or various ministry logos projected in different parts of your lobby. Better yet, imagine coming into Christmas and being able to project images of the nativity scene during a special reading of the Christmas story. Or at Easter, having an image of Jesus on the cross appear on your sidewalls during a powerful song about the crucifixion.
Regardless of how you use them, gobos are one of the most under utilized tools in the toolboxes of most churches. It also happens to be one of the most cost effective ways to enhance or change up your lighting, with metal gobos starting as low as $12 per gobo and most gobo holders under $10. Check out http://www.apollodesign.net/ to find the gobo you want, and then give our National Sales Consultants a call to get your order placed. Not finding what you want? Custom gobos are easy, we'll be happy to work with you to get exactly what you need.
And of course if you need ellipsoidal lighting fixtures to put your gobos into, look no further than the brand new Chauvet Ovation e-160ww, an LED based ellipsoidal with the output of a 575 watt lamp-based ellipsoidal. It's the perfect fixture to use for low-maintenance light projection anywhere in your facility.