Photographie 1000 Mots

The literal translation of my company's name Photographie 1000 Mots to English would be 1000 Words Photography. I chose this name for my studio in an effort to convey my goal as a photographer which is to tell a story with each photograph that I make.

A tortuous path

My love of photography goes back as far as I can remember. My first camera as a boy was a Kodak Brownie handed down to me from my mother. I remember the patience it took me to first wait until I got to the end of my roll of black and white film, then wait some more for the lab to develop it. It was all worth it when the lab technician would hand over the envelope and I could finally take a look at the photographs I had made. Places I had been, the expressions of my family members, moments frozen in time. I was mesmerized.

Growing up, I discovered pretty early that I had a somewhat unusual combination of traits. I had both the soul of an artist as illustrated by my love of music and photography, as well as the soul of a scientist which meant that I did very well in school and loved solving problems. I had the sensitivity of an artist and the rationality of a scientist. Although music and photography kept an important place in my life, when it came time to choose a career, I opted for the science path hoping that I would have a greater chance of paying the bills. Fast forward a few years and I had a B.Sc. followed by an M.Sc. in Chemistry.

After a few years working as a researcher in the lab, I realized that my interests were broader than research alone and that I did not see myself on the bench for the rest of my career. So what did I do? I went back to school, obviously! I opted for an MBA program in the hope that it would expose me to fields that I knew nothing about such as finance and marketing and I loved it. It allowed me to leave the lab and brought me to the next major leg of my career as a business analyst in the pharmaceutical industry.

Working as a business analyst suited me fairly well since it called upon both my analytical skills and my creativity in order to solve new problems on a daily basis. What I started to realize however is that I was missing the emotional connection component. This is what drove me to prepare the next chapter in my life, that of a professional photographer. Looking back at that point, I realized that photography was the ideal place for me, calling upon my creativity, my sensitivity, my passion, my analytical skills, my comfort with technology and my ability to solve problems. And so Photographie 1000 Mots was born.

Although much has changed since my first black and white prints taken with my Brownie, I still feel the same passion about photography as I did then. The same anticipation when I present the images I created to a client, hoping that they too feel that they are worth 1000 words.