Altman lends brilliant lighting to a holiday festival icon

“Every first weekend in December, San Diego's Balboa Park, a large urban park that is home to most of the city's museums and the Old Globe Theatre, holds the largest free festival in Southern California. Known as December Nights, this festival sees over 300,000 visitors that come to enjoy holiday foods, concerts, carnivals attractions, crafts, and performances over a two-day period. For the last four years, lighting designer Chris Rynne has crafted a looping 20-minute automated show of color and texture on the oldest planted tree in the park, the Moreton Bay Fig Tree, as part of the nighttime eye candy. Lighting this park icon is no small feat as it looms at a height of more than 70 feet tall and the canopy spreads over 150 feet wide. In years past, it's taken Chris two dozen PAR wash fixtures with scrollers and six moving lights to wash the tree in dynamic lighting excitement. This year, with the generous donation from Altman of sixteen Spectra PAR 100 fixtures for use on the project, he was able to get rid of a dimming rack and cut the power requirements down from 18,000 watts to less than 6,000, all without compromising on the design needs. In fact, the punch and depth in the blue hues delivered by LED's, unmatched by tungsten and gel, were greatly enjoyed by the designer and the public as some of the tree lighting looks this year showed off the capabilities of the Spectra PARs. In addition to the design flexibility, the installation volunteers enjoyed the difference of using the Spectra PARs from a set up and strike aspect as well. With the dimming rack gone, the fixtures all fitting within the capacity of a few circuits, and the 6' DMX tails mounted on each fixutre, minimal additional materials were needed to put the rig together, making for a cleaner look and a faster work process. The tree lighting was fantastic this year and Altman was there to help make it happen. “