Well, to start this series off I thought I’d begin with a true rockstar. Rude, brash, brilliant, merkley??? certainly fits the bill. To call him a photographer would be misleading, so I won’t. Too call him verging on insane might not be misleading but I won’t do that either, just go and read merkley???’s incredibly amusing blog and you can judge for yourself. He certainly has some strong opinions and, I have to admit, his post on photographers is so accurate I almost cried with laughter. Oh, and he’s photographed Gwen Stefani.
I stumbled across this guy, as I’m sure many others did, the very first week I discovered Flickr. That was quite a while ago now but I was immediately stunned by his work. His combination of incredible composition, unusual lighting and some seriously heavy Photoshop tricks and tweaks have resulted in some of my favourite photographs ever.
I realise that the photography “purists” amongst you may not appreciate the sheer level of manipulation and, normally, I would agree – I am not a fan of it in general, especially techniques such as HDR, fake infrared effects, etc. BUT merkley???, in my opinion, transforms his photographs into genuine works of art. He makes no apologies for his style and reliance on Photoshop and why the hell should he?
Using what you might call “snappy” cameras, built-in flash, lamps and a laptop, merkley??? demonstrates just how unnecessary £5000 cameras and £600 flash units really are.
It’s not subtle but it IS big and it IS clever. You can find lots of photos on merkley???’s Flickr stream but I thought I’d include some here for the lazier amongst you.
Enjoy…
