Eugene Smith Spanish wake technique

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Many people associate Smith with 35mm cameras. Smith began making photos before 35mm cameras were popular. The bare bulb flash was popular for lighting up small rooms. Especially if the room wasn't large, didn't have high ceilings and had several light colored sides. The technique got very popular with photojournalists into the 60s using Graphlex portable electronic flash.

I think Spanish Wake was made in 1951? So, Servo's argument is a good one, I think, given the equipment popular then and the image content.

It's my understanding that Irving Penn invented the soft box technique using Ascor Sunlight Series Electronic Flash heads in a scrimmed grid array. Later the more powerful flash tubes were built into a box with cooling fans. I've worked with these. Having an arm about 2ft away from a 10K w/s (joule) flash head when triggered... burned all the hair off your arm.

The first soft box that I saw and used was in the commercial studio I apprenticed in in 1972. It was about 4 ft x 4 ft and made if steel and took two people to raise and lower it. It had 4K of halogen lights in it as modeling lights or could be used as a color correct soft tungsten light source. There were 2 roughly 44" quartz flash tubes that were hooked to 2 2400ws Ascor power packs. There was no diffuser over the source but the light sources bounced of the interior of the structure which was painted white. It made a beautiful light much different from today's soft boxes

 

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Wow, isn't Link the guy who did all those RxR photos with big arrays of big bulbs (50B)?
Really cool stuff. I remember seeing some of those photos. I built a rig with a capacitor discharge dumping onto up to 6 50Bs. I used an SCR to trigger from the shutter sync. I know you understand this stuff. The unit was for bringing interiors up to daylight for architectural photos with a 4x5. Lot of light in a small package. I had a big leather glove for handling the 50Bs..

Firing 60 of those things would be worth watching. I think I might pay to see that.
Some time remind me to tell you Albert Watson and Annie Leibovitz stories. My old assistant worked for one and worked with the past studio manager for the other. This is PM stuff.

Link was the guy so did the trains. I met him and had some bulbs in my car. I thought it'd be pretty cool if he'd sign one. He looked at me funny but said yes then laughed.

When with the DOE I shot huge devices from plasma fusion reactors to nuclear reactors for isotope production. It was very interesting but dangerous.

 

[PKR]

Link was the guy so did the trains. I met him and had some bulbs in my car. I thought it'd be pretty cool if he'd sign one. He looked at me funny but said yes then laughed.

When with the DOE I shot huge devices from plasma fusion reactors to nuclear reactors for isotope production. It was very interesting but dangerous.

When I was in school I spent some time at UCLRL (what it was called back then), mostly in bldg 51, the Bev. Yeah, I've seen some big stuff.

 

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PKR did you say you used Ascor Sunlite ? Unfortunately I never did or maybe it was fortunate that I didn't.

These things were very dangerous and would arc and could kill a person. The joke was,"why does the Ascor Sunlite come with a broom stick? To knock the assistant off when it arcs".

A bit of trivia, Ascor was bought out and became Speedotron.

 

[PKR]

The first soft box that I saw and used was in the commercial studio I apprenticed in in 1972. It was about 4 ft x 4 ft and made if steel and took two people to raise and lower it. It had 4K of halogen lights in it as modeling lights or could be used as a color correct soft tungsten light source. There were 2 roughly 44" quartz flash tubes that were hooked to 2 2400ws Ascor power packs. There was no diffuser over the source but the light sources bounced of the interior of the structure which was painted white. It made a beautiful light much different from today's soft boxes

I helped my boss with building his first big one. I think it was also about 4x4. It took a Spedotron quad head. He had a local welding shop make it in sheet metal after our foamcore test rig. The inside was painted in white high temp engine paint. He used a commercial boom.

This guy worked for Penn for 3-4 years. The last two as studio manager. He really knew Penn's lighting, which is why I was there. Penn had a much different soft box rig that was powered by two Ascor Sunlight Consoles .. I think 10K w/s minimum. It was needed for 8x10 pour shots. The rig was so big and heavy that it took two assistants to move it into place. The unit had 16 Ascor heads.

I don't think Penn ever got recognized for his innovative contribution to modern studio lighting.
That's how Penn got that amazing contrast a standard soft box won't deliver.

 

[PKR]

PKR did you say you used Ascor Sunlite ? Unfortunately I never did or maybe it was fortunate that I didn't.

These things were very dangerous and would arc and could kill a person. The joke was,"why does the Ascor Sunlite come with a broom stick? To knock the assistant off when it arcs".

A bit of trivia, Ascor was bought out and became Speedotron.

Much worse than that. My food photographer neighbor had one. I repaired it when he couldn't get anyone else to do it. The Capacitor Drawers weighed in excess of 50lbs each. And yes, very dangerous.

I didn't know they became Speedotron. Balcar flash units were quite dangerous too. But, nothing had the kill rate of Novation. Lot of dead photographers.

 

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I was with a large ad agency for nine years in the 70's to the 80's and headed their photo and film department. I and my assistants built a 20 foot softbox and suspended it by winches from the studio ceiling. Unfortunately it wasn't mobile but it made some lovely light. I don't remember how many heads in it.

I used a lot of tungsten because we did a lot of motion picture. We had a mighty mole 10k fresnel. It was a monster. Also had a half dozen 5k fresnel. Just imagine the electrical service in that studio.

In the day after opening my studio I did large catalog projects in 8x10. Shooting 100 ISO chrome of a 40foot wide set with a 19" red dot Artar stopped down to f90 is have to turn all the lights off in the studio, open the shutter and fire my roughly 60K watt seconds of strobe 30 times to build up enough exposure. After 30 rapid flashes the flash tubes would be white hot.

I actually had an ascot light malfunction and fire shot out of it igniting the softbox. It was consumed by fire before I could get a fire extinguisher.

 

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Much worse than that. My food photographer neighbor had one. I repaired it when he couldn't get anyone else to do it. The Capacitor Drawers weighed in excess of 50lbs each. And yes, very dangerous.

I didn't know they became Speedotron. Balcar flash units were quite dangerous too. But, nothing had the kill rate of Novation. Lot of dead photographers.

I never used Balcar or Novatron. I used some large Broncolor but wasn't crazy about them although I'm sure they're better now. I had about 30K ws of Norman which I got rid of and bought Speedotron black line. The Normans weren't very dependable. It was common for them to blow diodes which sounded like a shotgun and a 3' diameter ball of fire would shoot out of the pack. When that happened you pulled the client off the ceiling and excused yourself to the bathroom to clean your pants out. I had it happen many times. I had 3 4000 ws Normans and just couldn't keep them going. One came back from repair having heavy duty diodes installed and a cooling fan. I tested it with a 4000 head and made 1 flash. 2nd flash it blew up.

Never had but 1 problem with Speedotron and it wasn't the packs fault. I was on location outside using an industrial generator that is pulled behind a truck. The regulator in the generator failed and it fed 220 to one of my 4800 packs. It just blew a transformer and that was it. I shipped it to Speedotron the next day and they repaired it the next and I had it back in service the next. Total repair cost was around $150.

 

[PKR]

I was with a large ad agency for nine years in the 70's to the 80's and headed their photo and film department. I and my assistants built a 20 foot softbox and suspended it by winches from the studio ceiling. Unfortunately it wasn't mobile but it made some lovely light. I don't remember how many heads in it.

I used a lot of tungsten because we did a lot of motion picture. We had a mighty mole 10k fresnel. It was a monster. Also had a half dozen 5k fresnel. Just imagine the electrical service in that studio.

In the day after opening my studio I did large catalog projects in 8x10. Shooting 100 ISO chrome of a 40foot wide set with a 19" red dot Artar stopped down to f90 is have to turn all the lights off in the studio, open the shutter and fire my roughly 60K watt seconds of strobe 30 times to build up enough exposure. After 30 rapid flashes the flash tubes would be white hot.

I actually had an ascot light malfunction and fire shot out of it igniting the softbox. It was consumed by fire before I could get a fire extinguisher.

Boy. Lots of light..and fireworks..

A Balcar story.. a local fashion studio that Macy's had on site was used for many newspaper ads. Photographers working for them often used their studio just as was done with the Vogue studio. A friend was on site when this happened. They had a bunch of 2400 w/s Balcar flash generators in the studio. A photographer was photographing a series of models and, as they were photographed, the next would walk up and replace the previous. So, this guy is working away, likely with a motor drive, and just as one of the models walked past a flash generator, it exploded, sending shrapnel into the wall. If that model had been a few seconds later her legs would have received that stuff.

And, you really had to make sure those units were discharged before changing power settings or adding or removing a flash head plug. It would melt the pins off the connectors if any power was left in them..

 

[oftheherd]

I certainly have no desire to copy or attempt to copy that work. It was just a reference as the lighting conditions will be similar and coincidentally I will be in Spain. Thankfully, i'm being commissioned to be myself, (except for choice of location) as I already have trust from the subject. It's just the technical part I need to be comfortable with hence the planned tests. I'll be using a 35mm camera with a 24 2.8 lens and 400 film.

Sorry, my choice of words was poor. I didn't mean that you lacked any originality of your own, only not to focus too much on that 'look.' Looks like you are on the right track.

 

[megido]

Sorry, my choice of words was poor. I didn't mean that you lacked any originality of your own, only not to focus too much on that 'look.' Looks like you are on the right track.

No offence taken whatsoever.
Well, the client has decided on a different location (in daylight) which makes my job easier even though I was looking forward to the challenge.
I hope this thread will be helpful to others anyway. Thank you to all who contributed.