Forty-eight from now, we’ll be in 2011. That’s a tiny bit scary given how fast 2010 went by. Becoming a father is probably part of that little time trick: first, the shock of learning you have impregnated your girlfriend (there’s something which comes before that however, but the “oh, it actually works” feeling is rather quick to die out in front of the moment’s pièce de résistance), second, the questions – left without answers, the discussions, the sleepless moments, the secret, which all lead to the Decision – after enough time has been spent on the above, but not too much, third, you are left in the blue for nine months were obviously all the advice you heard at some time is worth crap since every girl is different and there is no instructions manual for what’s going on in her brains especially right now.

Then comes the D-day, usually unexpectedly as well, and that’s when you actually start to realize what is happening. For a while, you are still in robot mode: going to the hospital each day, going home to barely sleep and doing it all over again the next day. And then, something magical happens: you leave the hospital, not only with your lover, but with your baby. You come back home, and that’s it, you’re not two anymore but three, you are a family.

From now on, even if you are going to lack sleep, even if you are not going to enjoy slacking in bed for a while, even if traveling around the world will offer some logistics issues, even if family celebrations are bound to become a nightmare, even if you will stop going clubbing until 3am every day (or you’ll die tryin’), from now on, you became a proud parent. I became a proud father.

Welcome to the second day of this special daily post week!

Today I finally received this print of a picture I took earlier this year in February. Yes, that is the Rainbow Bridge under the rain; I had this print sent to me first in september but it got damaged during transport and I had to wait for the fourth one (second was damaged too, third one lost) to get it right. As you see, it is quite large, and an acrylic glass is protecting the print: the result is really fantastic.

Which leads me to today’s topic: Flickr, ordering prints and magazines.

I realized how my flickr account was disorganized and lacking interest for someone looking at my photostream for the first time. Sets actually reflect more events than common themes or similarities between pictures, and the collections do not add more sense either to my portfolio. One would say it lacks a purpose, and that purpose should be to demonstrate my style and the kind of work I am familiar with. Fine tuning my stream thus ended up on my todo-list, along with the next uploads I would like to do on behance.net or on other portfolio websites (namely seen.by, printedart.com and 500px.com)

One stream that is tidy enough is Shane’s. And he’s been selling prints online recently, which is something I had been considering for some time while not really being motivated enough to do. This could be worth checking out before the upcoming exhibits. So far I tried to experiment with a few services, focusing on getting either cheap prints on unusual materials (the above being one of those tests) or quick manufacturing delays (Négatif+ in Paris is actually not bad at it, and not that expensive either). One thing that’s left for me to find is a way to get large prints, well, very large prints, that could be glued on a wall, just like a billboard. This would prove handy for the projects I am working on now…

Talking of printing, I discovered a service that prints on demand any of the offered magazines and ship them to your address; being such a magazine freak I instantly feared I had find a nasty way to spend money and get ruined in a couple of clicks. I have yet to browse all the categories but I have already ordered a couple of photography titles I hope will be visually interesting. I wonder if this sells actually…

Talk to you tomorrow!

Hi again!

Because I did not take the habit to post in the past, I kinda failed to maintain a high posting frequency.
ごめんね！

This week, I’m off so, although there are so many things I’d like to do, I cannot really pretend I don’t have the time to write more. And that’s why, here is the… daily post week! Yay!

Round 1: Art galleries vs. Paper.li

The former is pretty self-explanatory, and as I was saying yesterday, I am currently planning my future exhibits. I talked today with someone I have requested help and counseling from, someone who posts everyday one picture and one quote, matching each other in some way, and who is particularly good at that. I’d like her to do the same with the main works which will be exhibited in this upcoming event. There is still work to do, but hopefully, more on that later. So, as a general matter, I try to keep up to speed with what’s opening where and when, and in particular which galleries abroad could be a potential fit for some project in the near future. During my recent trip to Shanghai, I was surprised to see so many galleries, large and small ones, in Moganshan Lu, advocating for the existing opportunity, while the city being so interesting for photography projects, that it made almost the perfect match so start digging in (although I am also hearing a lot about Beijing and I cannot help but think this might be the next destination for me this year…)

The latter is not so simple to understand. Yet, its service might be the first try at a new generation of tools and services helping us to gather information more quickly and easily. It does provide some sort of daily report of what’s being said on twitter about one or multiple topics you define. An easy way to track what’s happening worldwide! So I tried to set up a simple request using hash tags describing the earlier context. The results are a little bit underwhelming now, though Small Rivers, the company behing Paper.li, is planning to release wider content authoring tools very soon.

Maybe this will be the time when we are be able to wire just into the information we need, removing the unnecessary clutter. Like eavesdropping the right discussion.

メリークリスマス！
What a Christmas! For once, we had snow. Not exactly in Paris for Christmas day, but the rest of France got it all for us. We had it a couple of days ago. Then, the gifts and the family celebrations. It’s been my son’s first Christmas, needless to say he got all the presents.
Because of him, we got to held up the first of a long series of Christmas eves, right here, at home.

Going backwards. No long-haul trip this month, but shortest ones. To Annecy, southern France. There was snow, quite a lot indeed. Even earlier this month, I also went to Frankfurt: snow again. And before, Liverpool (no snow but cold crisp weather), and Lyon, where I had this amazing chicken crust-pie-thing. Delicious.

Photography? Yes indeed. For 2010 I had made quite a number of resolutions, most of which could not be achieved, sadly. Anyway, here comes 2011, new resolutions (more on that in the following posts), exhibits plans, etc. I have visited a nice gallery in Paris which opened just recently and might hold a collective exhibit of pictures from me and a couple of photographers friends; ETA: March. Another show was unfortunately cancelled at the last minute, for which I had selected some b+w portraits I had done some time ago. For both of these, I have been toying with large prints to be either hung or stuck on walls, the idea being to try to cover as much surface as possible.
I also got to release a series of pictures taken back in 2008, while I was driving through California desert. I named the series after the highway I took to drive from LA to SF, going through several national forests, along lakes and mountains, witnessing amazing landscapes before my eyes. The series has been uploaded on my BeHance account.

I have now a week of holidays to spend at home, and there is still a lot to do: several opportunities caught my eye, for which I will apply, some preparation has to be done for the upcoming exhibit, and I have got some pictures to upload; I recently dug into past series from Heraklio, LA, Montreal… Hopefully I’ll have time to write some more as well.

Last day in Montreal.
I hope I’ll have time to find maple syrup, I remember it being terribly expensive at the airport, while a proper can of syrup was rather cheap at a supermarket. The opposite of alcohol really.

It is sunny again today over Montreal, and it seems I would be more encline to move in here now; I am not afraid of the cold anymore. Whether or not it remains an attractive city past the “snowhasfrozenitssummerletsgotomusicfestivals” thing, would the cultural life be up to it? I have yet to experience it, which leaves room for improvement.

The Hilton Bonaventure was a peculiar experience, with so many geeks pacing the corridors, emptying almost completely when the MIGS was over. Watching the warm water of the pool under the sun was quite magic, I wish I had taken my swim briefs.

I’m now staying in the St-Paul Hotel and the room is amazing. The sun has lit the building across the street with the reflections from the nearby windows.

From my window I can see the Habitat 67 architectural housing piece of the Avenue Pierre Dupuy. I really need to find that syrup.

It’s 10pm as I am writing this note listening to the latest Eels album (how many did they produce in the last two years, really?!), being at last in the hotel suite my company rented since the previous guest left the room at 5pm and it took more than 2 hours to clean it and let me in (although the bed table lamp’s light bulb was dead).

Gladly enough, my day until then had been very pleasant. I visited the cutest little 2 years old girl for dinner who had birthday cake pajamas, and I had been walking for hours in the Griffintown area where new ugly buildings replace the old ugly ones. Oh, and there’s the Darling Foundry too.

Thanks to the sunny and crisp winter weather combined with the former warehouses, I took such nice photos; mostly with the Instax of the recently acquired Yashica 35MF though, no luck for you.

I never walked that part of the city, although when discovering the old Montreal the last time I had seen the rusty buildings from afar which seemed to offer a good stroll. I did know I would pass by a DIY glass factory (Espace Verre) where people were at work even if we’re Sunday today, a tiny dam, some squirrels, old chevy rusting, the new Hangar restaurant and several dog parks.

Leaving that neighborhood I went to stock on music magazines, the usual suspects being Rolling Stone, Spin and NME, trying to get my hands on Bolaño’s 2666 too. I was surprised how few english books were on the shelves compared to the french ones. Even in Paris the english language section is bigger. Having read and enjoyed very much Amulet I wanted to get to the main course. I read the first 30 pages in the metro and so far so (very) good.

I have to get on to work though, new exhibition coming up soon. Once online the above pictures shall be advertised for here. I promise.

This is going to be the first time leaving home, wife and kid. Tough times.

I am seating in the airport lounge now, thinking about how having a little boy changed my life, and how it did not really change anything at all…

In the plane now. I packed up warm clothes since it started snowing this week in Montreal. I have my new Yashica with me, though the awaited carrying bag has not arrived yet. The plane is full of Quebec people and it is entertaining to hear them speak their French.

Location:Le Mesnil-Amelot,France

I have just found the way to configure BlogPress on my iPhone so I can blog on the go. Wow, so glad I got it. Here I am, blogging in my bed, without the need to be stringed to a computer, being able to say hello and post pictures from all around the world.

Last week I attended the launch of the campaign for Metz, a city in the East of France, which visuals I shot with a friend. I was so happy to see the pics in real life format, as there are going to be seen at bus stops or in the subway. That’s really neat!

The campaign is about people who lost the opportunity to move to Metz, and who now regret it. Metz is also the home of Pompidou Contemporary Art Museum Annex, which made me wanting to go there for a weekend.

Location:Boulevard de Strasbourg,Paris,France

Yesterday I went to this Fever Ray concert at l’Olympia, this beautiful and legendary venue of Paris. I probably spent one of my best times at a gig: the show, as some might have already read on the web, is magnificent, creating a perfect match for Fever Ray music.

Right before the musicians would start performing, the smoke machine literally filled the room with cloudy smoke that created a giant screen between the crowd and the band: we could barely see them at first, only guessing the shape of their costumes.
Lasers were striking the smoke puffs, creating weird and hypnotizing patterns, or simply bouncing off mirrors to create geometric shapes.

As you can see guess in the pics I could snap during the show, the show visuals were really astounding. The music does it all though, and you can find good videos from that night here, shot by @madeinchloe.

Rarely I have seen such a poetic show. I wished this would never end: once you started dancing, you were carried to a far far far away secret place. Thank you Karin.

It’s time for me to go back East. This evening I’m flying with one of my best friends to Shanghai, China. This Sunday, we will leave China for Japan, starting with Izu Shôtô island Niijima, then Tokyo. We’re going to miss Wire festival but anyway, won’t complain too much.

I had the chance recently to shoot a big promotional campaign for Metz city, it was really great to do professional work in such good conditions.

The other big news is that my next photo exhibit is going to happen end of September in Paris. This just got confirmed; further details will arrive soon, for now it’s holiday time!