The agreement was one hour outside in the nice old Quebec to get a nice casual shot of four investment executives. Turned out that my appointment was the day the stock market went berserk. 3 minutes of shooting inside the office, 21 frames counting my test shots for my flashes and that was it. Creativity on demand, and being able to produce under high pressure are sometime two very important qualities!

As an editorial photographer, I often get phone call for the next day, and sometime for the next hour. Or worse. Yesterday, I got a call and they wanted me to be on site 30 minutes later. So it is really difficult to plan ahead.

But since photo editor usually work Monday to Friday from 8 to 5, if I don’t have a job by Friday at 5pm, that usually means I will not work over the week-end.

It was last Saturday that we decided Cindy and I that we where really due for some time off away from home. And because I did not want to miss a job, we planned to leave Friday, IF I was still free.

Phone rang yesterday.

-Are you available for two portraits Saturday?

-Sure am!

However, we really needed some time off. So we decided to leave this Morning (Thursday) and come back Saturday morning, pending the confirmation of the time the portraits need to be done.

So this morning, we pack the car and head northeast. Destination: Les Escoumins, thru Tadoussac. Some whales photo would nicely fits into my stock archive.

We are 20 minutes into the trip when the phone rang.

– Hi Francis! I’m calling to confirm the portraits job. It is going to be Friday instead. At 11 and 1pm.

– Oh! Ok, no problem.

Quick chat with Cindy: We decide to continue but stop in Tadoussac. We’ll sleep there and head back quickly tomorrow so I can be on time for the assignment.

15 minutes latter, the phone rang again. It’s another client.

– Hi Francis! Would you be available for us tomorrow at 8:30 in the morning?

– Sure am!

So we decide to continue anyway. We’ll stop in La Malbaie to get some stock of the Casino, the city, the Manoir Richelieu and some other things, and then we’ll come back in the evening.

At 11, we are just arriving in Baie St-Paul, a charming village an hour and half from Quebec city. My Treo tells me that an email just came in.

It reads something like “Hi Francis! Could you do a quick job for us this afternoon?”

I reply back: “Sure can!”

We stay about an hour, so I can get some stock out of the place, and we head back.

On our way back, we decide to go with the first idea: leave Friday night for whole weekend.

As we are hitting the city, another email comes in.

And guess what? Yep: A client wants me for a job this Saturday!

Freelancing really means being “free”… for your client!

Not a lot of pictures posted here recently, right? It’s just because I worked mainly for magazine for the last 2 weeks. This Friday, with the new edition of La Semaine, I should be able to post 3 assignments I did for them

After providing me with an AOL picture of the week award, my photo of Marcus Nilson falling head first onto the ice at the IIHF world championship just won a first place in the sports category for the News Photographers Association of Canada pictures of the month contest.

“I’m not sure the bed will go thru the stair case”, said the delivery guy. “Did they move your current one thru there, or did they lift it thru the balconies?”

And here we go again.

“I don’t know. My parents took care of everything because we where at the hospital the day we moved in”

In many situation of our daily life, we are remembered the day Victor came and left. Now that we have Charles-Edward, we are often asked, “is he your first one?” Each time, we don’t know if we should say the truth, “he’s our first one alive”, and creates an uncomfortable moment or if we should diplomatically say yes, at the expense of his memory.

Time faded the injury, but sometime, our memory of that day comes back and it really hurts.