[Leica] PAW - going for Avedon light

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

> Catching up with PAWs.
>> From a recent  vacation.
> I am still obsessed with Avedon light.
> I thought this was getting somewhere.
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/3dyuvo
> 
> Eric
> 

White unsmiling faces do not an Avedon make.

Avedon shot in the studio with a medium white umbrella an assistant would
hold on a boom about 6 feet in front of the model as they moved around the
Cyclorama keeping it at the same distance in front of the subject.
His main look is this but of course he shot on location too.

Outdoors I'm not sure in his later work if he used reflectors or not like
many do know I think maybe he didn't from the shots if seen of his shoots.

But I've never heard of "Avedon light" and I've read pretty much anything
written in English written about Avedon or by him  for 3 or 4 decades.

I've heard the term "Strand Light" batterered about as in PAUL STRAND as in
the light before a rainstorm (yellow) which looks like the light in the
beekeeper shot maybe. It was shot on the shady side of a barn with a
seamless tacked to the wall.

Avedon over exposed slightly and over developed by quite a bit his PLUS X
and had his printers print his faces hot. Making sure they "pop". Such
printing of faces is a very common approach in the past decades and is the
way I print. I don't think the movable boom with an umbrella was his
concoction either. He probably learned it in the merchant marines where he
learned photography and from Brodovitch when he started out.

What I'm seeing here is an over exposed shot of a boy on a beach.
And just printed or presented way way light.

What the light was like at the location we'd not know as much information is
whited out in the post processing.

Another term for this is "Salon Printing". A bit lighter than Avedon prints
perhaps.



Mark William Rabiner
Harlem, NY

rabinergroup.com