Internship done

Here I am, done with the internship. For those who are curious about what I was doing and how an agency is working, here:

I was helping out, what they call here: Iconographer, or for us Photo editor. The concept of the agency is quite simple. They accepted around 200 photographers working on their personal project and sometimes having assignments to do and the role of the agency is to put a photo database available to clients and do follow up on what the client uploaded to use. In the morning, the media department crew were going through newspapers and magazine to check if they used a photo from their photographer. The percentage the agency is keeping is a way for the photographer not to deal with clients, to look if an image as been used so on and so forth.

Every morning, I checked if a photographer uploaded new images. If so, I needed to write the proper caption adapted for the agency in english and french.
Sometimes, a magazine was calling the photo editor, asking her to submit proposal for a specific article. Example: an article talking about women and breast cancer. She asked something not too cliché and even blurry. I went through all the photo database and submitted photos. The same for newspaper and cover books. The crew is dealing with: how much a photographer is paid if a photo story or a simple image is published. They have an big archiving section. They say 15% of their film and prints have been scanned. So at the beginning I needed to learn who were the photographers, they style and the type of story they did. So if a magazine is calling for a photo, I needed to go look  in the system if a story has been done and if it’s been scanned. If not, I needed to get the film out of the Cardex and scanned.

By going through their website and all. I noticed that they don’t have a multimedia “service”. Like magnum in motion or multimedia by VII. I had lunch with the director of the department and proposed me to do a test. The market here is not really developed for multimedia. This was last week and I ran out of time to do it. But currently still working on it. They gave me high res images from a photographer in Australia who did a beautiful serie on the Rockabilly movement in Sydney.

The same internship in Canada or USA wouldn’t be the same as what it was in Paris. Even if I’m french, I’m not french from France but from Quebec. Big difference. It was hard sometimes because parisians are not talking to each other. they don’t care about each other. They NEVER ask: How are you? When I asked them how they were. They looked surprised and answer: Good. Without asking back. You start to talk to a stranger… they’ll run away. So thinking about this whole mentality from the country… photojournalism is hard to do in France. People don’t care about simple things. A multimedia piece on simple subject wouldn’t work. They want to learn something, they won’t spend a minute of their life if it’s not an intelligent thing or to get educated. A north American person can seriously die by not breathing… Désolée les français, mais c’est vrai…

But at least, I learned that by living it. I now know what type of images they are looking for in the magazines. What type of stories they like. This internship was perfect way to get to know people and the market. I worked 10am through 7pm… no time to shoot really. But got couple of good random shots

I am now in Sweden visiting a friend for two weeks. An excellent way to take a break from Paris…

Photos!

Obélisque, place de la concorde

Metro station

Windmill in Montmartre

Lady in Pink, musée d’Orsay

Metro station, Paris

The canadian wondering what is she doing in Paris…

Me and my cousin, Lùa

Biking in St-Germain

~ par melaniefordham le mai 5, 2009.