[Leica] explain Avedon light

[faneuil at gmail.com (Eric Korenman)]

Yes- most beginners flood their subject with way too much light.
"Uncontrolled" is the perfect word for the the look.

Eric

On 12/5/06, Mark Rabiner <mark@rabinergroup.com> wrote:
>
> Very simply with a medium white umbrella kept the same distance, about 5
> feet I think in front and up from the subject by an assistant holding it
> up
> over his head on a boom like a mike boom person in a movie. That's his
> main
> look from his main light.
>
> He used backdrop lights to keep the backdrop white most the time but would
> let it go gray sometimes. Never switched to soft boxes like most did when
> they became lightweight and affordable. Expect maybe he'd use those strip
> lights for the backdrop. The important thing is he kept his main light
> close
> to the subject so they could dance around freely on the backdrop and the
> assistant would keep up with it. A big mistake photographers make is
> having
> their lights too far away. Takes huge amounts of watt seconds and you
> loose
> contrast and get flair and looks mediocre and uncontrolled.
>
> The far west shots are a backdrop on the side of a barn. I'm not even sure
> about the reflectors whatever the day was that's what the light was.
> Cloudy
> bright would seem to be what would be desired. f11 and be there.
> I'm interested in doing that some time. Having an outdoor seamless. And
> shooting there under all kinds of light conditions. I'm sure the variety
> would be far more than if I had a huge lighting set up indoors and tried
> to
> move them around. Which is kind of what I did when I shot retail fashion
> for
> a department store 9 to 5. I just kept moving things around to keep busy
> and
> not be board and keep things interesting.
>
> Mark Rabiner
> New York, NY
> 40?47'59.79"N
> 73?57'32.37"W
>
> http://rabinergroup.com/
>
>
>
>
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