Francis Vachon Photographe

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June 27, 2010

Photographe hôte au sommet du G8

Je reviens tout juste d’Huntsville où j’ai couvert le sommet du G8 en tant que photographe hôte. En d’autres mots, j’étais un des photographes officiels engagés par le sommet pour leurs propres besoins.

Tous les matins je devais être soumis à une fouille très intensive et à plusieurs points de contrôle, pour ensuite passer la journée sur le site, dans la « bulle » des chefs d’état. Même en étant dans cette zone ultra-sécurisé, nous étions constamment entouré de snipers, policiers, militaires, bateaux (sur le lac), véhicules de l’armée, hélicoptères de combats, caméra de sécurité, brouilleurs d’onde cellulaires, détecteurs de mouvement, etc. C’était vraiment surréel. Imaginez les plus grandes mesure de sécurité que vous pouvez penser, et multipliez cela par 10. Même dans les films, ils ne s’approchent pas du tout de la réalité.

Voici quelque une des photos que j’ai réalisées.

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June 23, 2010

Twitter put bread on my table today.

Today was supposed to be a quiet day packing my baggage and my camera bag for my gig at the G8 in Huntsville as one of the host photographer.

I woke up at 6h30 and, as I do everyday, I took my iPhone to read my mail, my Facebook friends updates, and my Twitter feed.

I then read a tweet that got my attention. Something like “it’s fun with Twitter, big spot news are available right away”. Ok, what was going on? I quickly scroll to find out that 30 minutes earlier, a small plane crashed with 7 peoples, likely dead, inside. The crash site was just a kilometre north of the Quebec City airport, 30 minutes from my home.

Jumped out of bed, took my gears and my laptop, updated my Facebook statue and my Twitter feed (very quickly as you can see), and headed to the airport. It did not took long before a newspaper messaged me to get photos.

After difficulty made my way through the first line of police blocking the road to the scene, I arrived on site, and saw CP staffer Jacques Boissinot, who arrived 3 minutes before me. “I’m supposed to leave for the G20. I can’t stay. Can you freelance for us?”, he asked me.

So I messaged the newspaper back to tell them my photos would be on the Canadian Press feed and they would have them there.

My quiet day, thanks to Twitter, turned into a 6 hours gig for the Canadian Press.

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June 14, 2010

Behind the scene in my studio

Here is a behind the scene done by Frederic Bergeron of a shooting I did for a French Canadian magazine recently.

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Playing by the St. Lawrence river

I try not to post too much photos of my son. I guess I am afraid my personal attachment to the subject would derails my judgment on how good the photo is. But I keep coming back to this photo of my son I did last month while he was playing by the St. Lawrence river in front of my parents cottage. So I guess it’s a good photo that I should share.

Kid on a shingle beach
Charles-Edward Vachon, two, walks on a shingle beach with a stick in his hand in St-Michel-De-Bellechasse, 45 minutes East of Quebec City.

Oh and by the way, I’ll eventually be able to post some baby photos like I did with Edward because my girlfriend is pregnant again.

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June 13, 2010

Amiral SC de Quebec de la W-League

La W-League est la deuxième ligue de soccer féminine en Amérique du Nord. Cette année, je serai le photographe officiel du club de Québec, l’Amiral SC, pour quelque partie. Voici quelques photos de leur premier match locaux perdu 1-0 contre les Comètes de Laval.
Amiral de Quebec

Amiral de Quebec

Amiral de Quebec

Amiral de Quebec

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June 10, 2010

Dominic Brown of Beenox

Beenox CEO Dominique Brown poses at the company headquarter in Quebec City.l
Beenox CEO Dominique Brown poses at the company headquarter in Quebec City May 26, 2010.

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June 9, 2010

Can you afford doing stock photography?

Stock photo is a question of numbers. And it’s a long term game. After a while playing it, you can determine you return on investment (ROI) by dividing your total stock photo number by your annual stock revenue to get an average sale per image per year.

As an example, let’s say you have 2000 images and made 4000$ in sale over the year. 4000/2000 gives you an average sale per image per year of 2$. If you submit 1000 new images the next year, you can hope to make an additional 2000$ that would be added to the 4000$ from the 2000 images that you already had for a total of 6000$.

Your ROI will hopefully raise over the years, but should not fluctuate too much. After a couple of year of monitoring your yearly ROI to make sure it is stable, you can start to plan your trips or your shooting.

If you go on a five days travel that would cost you 700$ on hotel, meal and gas, how many usable images do you need to bring back to break even after a year? Let’s use again the 2$ of our previous example. 350 image would fetch you 700$. 350 images over 5 days would require you to photograph 70 usable images per day. Would you be able to do it? If not, would you mind to wait more that a year before breaking even?

What about makeup artist and model fee if you plan to shot lifestyle stock photo? What would be the cost, and how many images can you produce out of it?

This is a long (but hopefully informative) introduction to say that I recently went to Toronto. I explained in a previous post that I went on a five days photo spree before a 3 days photojournalist conference. I calculated the extra expenses of those five day and it made sense to do it. According to my ROI calculated from my 3 years doing stock photo and the number of image I submitted to agencies, it should take me a year to break even. Everything after that would be a net profit.

Yesterday, I received my Canadian Press sale report and, with my images being there for only half of the month, 4 images sold. Actually 3, but one sold twice. Let’s see where I am in year!