RIP Pierre Herbert

I won't bother you with tearing feelings here, I never knew the guy. But I knew his photography and it sucks he's not there to make more of it.

Pierre Herbert pulled an amazing amount of great shot within the simple context of his own family intimacy. His prolific Flickr account speaks for itself.
His mastery of light on B&W at first, then of color treatment, is highly inspirational to me. Subtile and sensitive, he is the photographer who shot my personal ultimate B&W portrait ever (see samples below).

What to learn from him:

  • All the subjects you need are around you, just open your eyes. The most conventional scene can become the most amazing image.
  • Photoshop and strobism? what is that?
  • Light and exposure are the essence of photography
  • Large and medium format photography rule. Period.
  • He used a mamiya 645, large format gear,  a Yashica 124 and a Blad 501, and for digital a Nikon D80 (yes yes, that reminds me of someone). NO YOU DON'T NEED THE LATEST FX 22MP CANON WITH A STABILIZED 1500$ LENS TO SHOOT GOOD. Damnit, he was a total master with 250$ used medium format gear. Oh and larger formats rule, sorry you spent on a SLR the price of all the equipment above mentioned :p
Condoleances to his family, chances that they read this are little but, well...a man shooting like that cannot have been a bad person. So I mean it.

Now the pictures :) I can hardly choose only few... First one is the portrait above mentioned.








His site.

A interview in French of Pierre Herbert explaining better than I can his photography.

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