I came across photographs by a French photographer named Emile Frechon. The light in his photographs looks different from the light that I've seen in the work of almost any other photographer.

Examples (there aren't many of his photographs on the web):

http://www.hypnos-photo.com/actu/AA%20Bret...xpoBretagne.htm ('http://www.hypnos-photo.com/actu/AA%20Bretagne/expoBretagne.htm')

http://www.jmcfaber.at/inventory/classic/frechon.htm ('http://www.jmcfaber.at/inventory/classic/frechon.htm')

Any ideas on how he might have created those effects?

Just had a quick look. Some of them have an erie 3-dimensional look to them. Pretty cool.

Beautiful work. Looks like gold toning? I found a link to a discussion on Photo.net regarding Emile Frechon:

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-...g?msg_id=0037ab ('http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0037ab')

These guys were true masters of light..

A large part of the "look" has to do with the uncoated lenses with quite a bit of flare that helped fill the shadows. When you couple this with orthochromatic emulsions, you get "...different from the light that I've seen in the work of almost any other photographer."

You can sort of duplicate this look using an old, uncoated lens or a Rodenstock Imagon plus a blue filter (like about a #38) on a relatively long scale black and white film developed in PMK developer.

Then if you print on a chlorobromide paper (or even a good variable contrast paper) and thio-carbimide tone the print, you can get nearly the same look.

Wow. Great advice. Many thanks.