March 25, 2013 Brooks Whittington Portraits

Portraits: Avo Uvezian

On March 22, Avo Uvezian celebrated his 87th birthday. As has become standard, the legendary pianist and his eponymous cigar brand has planned a limited edition birthday cigar and tour, the first of which will take place on March 28, 2013. A little while back he was in town for an event in Dallas as part of a separate promotion.

Avo Uvezian 1

For you photography nuts, this image was taken with a Canon 1DMkIII and a Canon 50mm f/1.2 lens at f/2.5, ISO was 800 and the shutter speed was 1/100th. Light is a combination of the incandescent light hanging above him and two video lights on spotted on his face to help light under the brim of the hat. Photograph was shot in RAW and converted to JPG using Lightroom and fixed up in Photoshop.

Avo Uvezian 2

The second image was photographed as he played a few songs to the crowd and was not posed. Image was taken with a Canon 1DMkIII and a Canon 24mm f/1.4 lens at f/1.4, ISO was 800 and the shutter speed was 1/60th. Light is a combination of incandescent, once again hanging above him, and two video lights on spotted on his face to help light under the brim of the hat. The photograph was shot in RAW and converted to JPG using Lightroom and fixed up in Photoshop.

(Update: The original version of this story incorrectly listed Uvezian’s age as 78, he is 87.)

AVO Avo Uvezian Oettinger Davidoff AG
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Brooks Whittington

I have worn many hats in my life up to this point: I started out as a photojournalist for the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, then transitioned to photographing weddings—both internationally and in the U.S.—for more than a decade. After realizing that there was a need for a cigar website containing better photographs and more in-depth information about each release, I founded my first cigar blog, SmokingStogie, in 2008. SmokingStogie quickly became one of the more influential cigar blogs on the internet, known for reviewing preproduction, prerelease, rare, extremely hard-to-find and expensive cigars, and it was one of the predecessors to halfwheel, which I co-founded.

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