Kate Hutchinson: Why am I marrying him?

Being real busy over the last week tying up loose ends, I kinda missed out on this one. Photographer Kate Hutchinson is currently having a show entitled Why am I Marrying him? at the Visual Voice gallery. The show is currently up and running until October 19th, so make sure to stop by the Belgo building to check it out!

Habitat67

Today I was scouting a location for an upcoming shoot over at Habitat67. For those who are not familiar, it's a housing project all made of concrete, consisting of cube compartments stacked on top of one another that was build for Expo67. Ever since its construction, this private housing project has been an architectural landmark of Montreal. So for about an hour, I walked around the place looking for a specific point of view for an upcoming project. I had never been there and was pretty impressed by the structure. I love architecture. We ended up with 3 compositions from which we will be choosing only one for yet another stop motion animation. More on that soon...

Urbania's in the bag

Today I visited Toxa's new headquarters. Nice. Two floors, lots of window light, wide open spaces and light wooden floor, high class espresso machine... Did I mention the ping pong table? So I joined the photo editor in the conference room and showed the selected shots for the upcoming issue. I'm not used to shoot live events. Usually I don't like this type of work, but I never backup from a challenge... like Marty McFly I guess! I had a couple of good compositions, others I could crop to make more dynamic, but what made the pictures better was my editorial choice of retouching them so the focus is on the main subject. To do so I nutralized the colors, toning the shots chocolate, giving it a vintage look, but retaining partial coloration on the subjects. I think shooting from ice level really gave me an edge on the story, allowing me to live the action from within. Now I'm curious to see which pictures will be selected and how they will be layed out on that sweet 5 page spread!

Me modeling!

So a couple of days ago Nik comes to me asking if I have some time an evening this week. Of course, I tell him, What for? I want to shoot you he replies! How cool is that! So last night we headed to the studio, had a drink and moved towards the lobby of our building where Nik had planned his composition. I must admit I love "modeling". Whenever I shoot someone, I like to act the part to show what I'm looking for. It's a good way to break the ice and usually people are more open to commit themselves when they see you have the guts to do it yourself! So Nik had me do different variations within the same framing. I'm curious to see which one will come out the best! I posed a couple of times for Nik in the past but was never able to get a print! So here's a subtle message to you Mr. Mirus!

Clay Stang or Photography 2.0

In this era of fast communication and web 2.0 where the user creates the content, Toronto-based photographer Clay Stang is nothing short of a visionary! In an ongoing personal project, he allows the public to participate by choosing the location, action, prop and expression of the model he chose for this particular shoot. Based on the results, he matches the different variations to build his unique and original composition. What an excellent and creative idea! And the resulting images are awesome.

Street, Dancing, Flashlight, Laughing. Copyright Clay Stang

Statue, Catching a dream, Rock painting, Disgust. Copyright Clay Stang

Forest, Floating, Water Mellon, Happy. Copyright Clay Stang

This type of initiative keeps the photographer on its toes and allows him to explore his creativity. On the business side of things, it a creates a following of people that will check out his site each month to see the resulting images they helped to create. Again, what a brilliant idea! I would be tempted to copy it, but I have too much respect for its creator and his work!

Check out Clay Stang's impressive work here!

All images are Copyrighted and should not be reproduced without Clay Stang's permission, which I go!

Hitting two birds without any stones!

Click the image to read the Article (french only)

A friend of mine brought my attention to the weekly paper ICI Montréal saying that one of my shots had been published in this week's edition. Flipping through the pages, I realized that not one but two shots were in. The first one illustrates an article on Design mentioning both Karim and Julien, with whom I shot the MTV pic that they used in the article. Unfortunately (which seems to be too often the case in the newspaper industry), I wasn't awarded any credits for the shot... The second shot published is an ad for the Club Social TV show which premiered last week on TV5.

James Nachtwey TED Prize

Visit xdrtb.org

I first got acquainted with James Nachtwey's work through the movie War Photographer. During the whole movie, the seated crowd was in complete silence. It was probably the most emotional screening of my life. If you haven't seen this documentary, please check it out, especially if you are a photographer. Nachtwey has spent his life documenting wars and poverty in the most riveting way. His pictures, taken in the field at close range are so emotionaly charged and his multi-layered compositions always tell the story, a story that otherwise would remain untold... But behind the pictures, behind the lens, there's a man who's life purpose has been to use photography as a mean of peace, being a witness to life atrocities and making sure that us, the good people of the civilized world never forget what were leaving behind... A great photographer, an even greater man... sadly capturing history in the making.

The end has come!

Finally, after 5 intensive weeks of work, our stop motion project, who's client we still can't mention, is coming to an end. We already had the agency meeting, the music is in its final approval stage and the big client meeting is set to Monday! On my side, every thing was delivered last Monday, as I had spent the previous night doing batch processing, naming, color correcting, outputting to various formats and exporting into video clips. The guys spent the week editing the piece and I participated somehow by retouching a full sequence of 81 images frame by frame because it couldn't be automated and we reshot a couple of sequences with all the post work mentioned above. I spent the last two days editing a "Making Of " of the project. A 4 1/2min stop motion video that I shot as we went along, improvising compositions and camera movements. This will also be presented to the client as an extra. It really shows all the work and team effort that went into creating this 30sec sequence that is closer to an art video than it is to pure advertising.

As for its public viewing, it'll have to wait at least till January for the campaign to start, but it should have plenty of visibility. Big thanks to Karim Charlebois Zariffa who invited me to this project and from whom I learned a lot throughout the process. Same goes to Pascal Brousseau with who I spent most of my time on a daly basis and who's patience, attitude and talent are nothing short of phenomenal! Also a big thanks to all the other artists involved in the making of this project. Good times!

MTV One: the Making Of!

MTV-One from Julien Vallée on Vimeo.

Believe in yourself!

I'm back from the Lux, a photography contest celebrating the best of Quebec's professional photography. Before you ask, I didn't win anything. Boohoo! I submitted in a couple of categories but wasn't expecting to win anything. What's disappointing though, is that it seems that the photographic diversity of Quebec resumes itself to a few names that win everything every year. Don't get me wrong, their work is very good, as a matter of fact it's excellent. But other photographers with equally awesome photography work need this window of opportunity to showcase their work as the winners of this contest get published and get visibility in the ad agencies. That being said, you don't need contests to know the quality of your work. You need to believe in yourself! I think this is the only lesson to be learned here. Congratulations to this year's winners and thank you for producing such inspiring work! Special mention to Elizabeth Delage who graduated from Dawson and who's work was showcased in the student category!