Edward Curtis Lighting Techniques-Lighting Tent??

[David_5527]

I'm wondering if anyone know how Edward Curtis lit his subjects. I seem to recall he had a tent with diffusion on top and black background. If you look at many of his portraits, light came from above and maybe was bounced to the subjects face. Is there anyone using this type of thing? Or skylight in a studio? Thanks. db

[Frank Petronio]

Didn't Irving Penn use something similar in the Mideast when he photographed nomads? In any event it would have to be a custom job - a pretty fun but expensive project.

[Drew Bedo]

Didn't Irving Penn use something similar in the Mideast when he photographed nomads? In any event it would have to be a custom job - a pretty fun but expensive project.

Seems like I have seen camping tents with a mesh panel in the top . . .rainfly over that. Maybe i DON'T REMEMBER IT RIGHT.

I have seen ads in astronomy magazines for a rent-like telescope shelter where the top zips open to stick out a big telescope . . .might also work.

[lenser]

There are a couple of images of Penn's tent system in one of the old Time/Life Library of Photograpahy series. AS I recall, in this illustration, he was working with New Guinea Mud Men.

[Frank Petronio]

He went to Peru and other remote places too, I forgot the name of the book that resulted. I do remember that when I was a kid, Pizza Hut decorated their restaurants with knock-offs of Penn photos of fake indigenous Italian pizza makers and I was kind of insulted. Except why was I in Pizza Hut at all?

[David_5527]

He went to Peru and other remote places too, I forgot the name of the book that resulted. I do remember that when I was a kid, Pizza Hut decorated their restaurants with knock-offs of Penn photos of fake indigenous Italian pizza makers and I was kind of insulted. Except why was I in Pizza Hut at all?

There probably is Pizza hut]s at all those places he photographed by now...

[David_5527]

Here is a photo of Penn's tent....http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections...s/ethnographic

[vinny]

bill schwab does many of his wet plate portraits under his ez-up style tent.

[Sylvester Graham]

Early photographers built crazy glass houses rigged with levers and pulleys and such. I don't know about Curtis but if he had a stationary studio out there in a frontier town maybe it was one of those.

[cowanw]

He had a studio in Seattle, that his wife got in the divorce settlement. She had managed it when he was on the road.
Pictures here
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm...m&file_id=8857
and here
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/dan.../becoming.html