Olivier Meriel in Lenswork

[Herb Cunningham]

My wife gave me a subscription to LensWork for Xmas. Today I got the issue #56, which has a portfolio by Olivier Meriel, who shoot 8x10 and 11x14 - he is French (with a name like that what else?), and I am really impressed with the work in the magazine.

Would those of you who are much advanced be so kind as to look at the prints-he makes contacts, and see if you can figure out how he made these?

I can do a crude approximation of the dark sky etc in Photoshop, but he is working in contacts, something I am getting into-got a box of AZO from Michael White, etc.

I have never heard of this guy, but he is really really really good!

I can guess about sepia, etc, but would be groping in the dark.

You can download photos from www.lenswork.com, titled "Inland from Normandy" one of his best is on page 13.

[ISO 2]

Herb,

Gotta tell you something.


http://largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/500572.html (http://largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/500572.html)

Have a good day.

[william_3670]

Michael White?

[Brian Ellis]

I looked at these pictures when LensWork arrived. I was appalled at the printing in some of them . Somewhere else I saw a discussion of these photographs and particularly the printing. Some people maintained that he really wanted big black blobs in the skies and other places, that it's part of his artistic vision. Maybe so, I don't know anything about the photographer but in my opinion the apparent haphazard burning looks so bad in some of them that I can't believe it was intentional. If it was then I think he's misguided because it's distracting and causes more attention to be paid to the printing technique (or apparent lack thereof) than to the photographs.

[David Luttmann]

Funny,

I enjoyed the photos a great deal! Not really my printing style, but they certainly evoked a dark emotion to them. ...more than some "safe" and "stale" B&W work.

[Herb Cunningham]

Thanks to ISO2 for the link. Great comments, and to William, it 's Michael Smith-it was late when I wrote the post.

The comments on the link show such a spread of opinion (I hate the word diversity these days), but the reason for photos being "ART" is whether or not they evoke a feeling or emotion, if you like.

As you can tell by my original post, the Meriel work did evoke an emotion, his stuff is dark and brooding for the most part, and it works for me, and as near as I can tell, the group says he is burning in during contact prints. I was not sure how that is done, as I am just gathering stuff to contact print after almost 50 years.

The article did say he uses both 8x10 and 11x14.



Is this a great forum, or what?

[ISO 2]

"Uses Kodak Ego and Dammitol for his prints."

;)

[paulr]

Michael White taught me how to photograph back in the day. I learned all about controlling contrast by peeing in the dammitol, and sharpness controll by taking steel wool to the back element of the lens. I know there's been a lot of discussion about his lenses; at the time he used a tack-sharp antichromatic metaphotar and rare-earth kodak emotagon.

[Mark Sawyer]

I've spent hours searching for metaphotar and emotagon lenses on ebay, but I guess they're fairly rare. Still, when I find one, I bet it makes me a much better photographer. I'll go down to my local dealer on Monday and see if he can special order some Dammitol. Thanks for the information, everybody! This forum can be such a fountain of, ummm... knowledge.

[Herb Cunningham]

I went to the local photo shop and they were out of Dammitol, but said they would have a few gallons in next week.

Meantime, I went to Meriel's web site and looked at a lot of his stuff. After the few shots in Lenswork, the rest gets pretty Wagnerian, if not downright depressing.

[Michael Scarpitti]

I looked up this fellow's work. Although I certainly do agree that much LF work is stale, his is incompetent. Surely there is a third option.


http://olivier.meriel.free.fr/ (http://olivier.meriel.free.fr/)