#tbt:LUMEN

This #tbt is about one of our favourite nights of the entire year in our city -- the LUMEN festival, which is a festival of light, technology, and art. It's always so much fun and we look forward to it every year. This year was double the fun because the festival kicked off on Friday night with a drone show in our city's main park.

We may have gotten to the drone show a little early, and the kids might have been just a little bored! They played around with these light up rings which were being handed out. And I might have entertained myself with taking weird pictures! Hahaha!

 

Once the drone show started, we were mesmerized. It was so fascinating to watch.

I loved the tree and the building! This drone show was hosted by some corporation to mark the opening of a new condominium in our city. I'm not super excited about condos, but I did think it was a good publicity stunt for the corporation.

After the show, we walked to a different part of the park to enjoy some early LUMEN inspired light and water features!

There was also an installation on our town square with these loops. When you pushed the bar back and forth, while sitting in the loop, a short film flew by. There were about twelve of these and each one had a different film. They were really fun to see!

The next night was officially LUMEN! And we were there early to try and avoid some of the crowds.

Last year, Rachel desperately wanted to get her nails painted with florescent nail polish. The line up was over an hour long so we said, "No." This year, we went there first and only waited twenty minutes. Rachel was super-excited to get this done!

An official LUMEN sign (do you see Sam and Rachel in that picture) and a fun lit up fake tree installation.

Getting a fun family photo taken! Supposedly this installation was actually about something else but everyone was using it as a backdrop for colourful photos!

All this art was made by us with a special film, many pieces of Scotch tape, and then looking at it through a special light. It was so cool. The more pieces of tape you used, the more interesting it was to look at.

This was an installation at the library. Rachel's ghostly appearance was projected onto a screen. 

In the library parking lot was quite the party. Rachel and I got sparkles painted on our cheeks to add a little more fun to the evening!

We shared a snowcone from a food truck while Sam and Dave shared samosas.

Dave and I were excited about the inflatable mushroom forest!

Sam and Rachel stood in front of a projector and were illuminated, in triangles, on the side of a building. There are always a lot of fun things to play with during LUMEN.

I then proceeded to take way too many pictures of the lights in the park reflecting on the lake, as well as of the kayakers on the lake who had glow sticks on their paddles and kayaks.

I warned you -- way too many pictures!

Another family photo by another LUMEN sign, in the park this time.

The park had these lit up flowers made of fabric, I think. They were fantastical.

A mini installation on the corner of a main intersection uptown.

This little laneway always has something fun in it. When you walked underneath the wedding bells, the lights would change colours.

 

Unfortunately, we had to leave LUMEN a little early because I was starting to get a bad headache and feel nauseous. About five minutes into our twenty minute walk home, I started violently throwing up. I threw up about every three minutes until we got home by which point I had clued into the fact that I'd somehow gotten food poisoning :( Except for the unexpected end to the evening, these two nights were incredible and we're already looking forward to LUMEN 2024 -- just nine and a half months to go! Hahaha!