At the new flagship Platinum Wheels showroom in Fourways, Johannesburg, Opple Lighting SA has ensured that the company’s stock – premium luxury cars such as Lamborghini, Ferrari, Porsche and McLaren – are displayed in the best possible light.

Following on famous firsts for sporting arenas in South Africa, St George’s Park Cricket Ground and Coetzenburg Athletics Stadium, the Western Province Cricket Club’s (WPCC) main hockey field now boast an industry first too. The hockey field has become the first sporting club in South Africa to install a state-of-the-art FIH standard LED lighting system that brings international standards to hockey at club level.

With the number of people working flexitime or from home, it is only a matter of time before a lighting designer is asked to light a home office.

Digital technologies are changing everyday life and viewing habits and also creating new scope for lighting. The young Swedish lighting designer Joaquim de Abreu, showcased by ERCO in its "Spot-on" series, is concerned with placing light at the centre of design and creating vivid and lively stages for lighting that stimulate and inspire in an artistic and functional way.

Phil Hymes, a veteran lighting director who became a major, if irascible, backstage figure with Saturday Night Live for his strong opinions about stagecraft he liked and comedy he disliked, died July 29 in a Manhattan hospital. He was 96.