Trop de chose à raconter, pas assez de temps pour le faire… En anglais seulement cette fois! Allez maman, tu es capable de comprendre!

Finally, I have the Internet at home. I ditched out Sympatico, and I am now with Cogeco. For almost a week, I had no cable, no Internet, and no girlfriend (Cindy will go back and forth from Quebec City to Belleville for some times). Good thing we were pretty busy working on the Pioneers (the newspaper) because there was nothing to do at my place!

Speaking of Cindy… She took the train back to Quebec City last Sunday. The guy next to her was a journalist and photographer from the Toronto Sun on his way to Kingston. Now is this a sign or not? She showed him her portrait port-folio, and they talked about me. He gave her his business card and told her that I should call him when I would be in Toronto. I sure will. Actually, I will email him this weekend as a “first contact” because I don’t know when I will be free for a day in Toronto.

I went to Montreal Wednesday evening because I had two photo related events the next day.

So Thursday morning, I was on my way to meet a photo editor for a port-folio review. My pictures did not really impressed him, but I should however intern with them during the school 3 weeks Christmas break. I’ll save the paper’s name until it’s official, but let’s say it’s one of the biggest paper in Quebec. I look forward to be there. Those 3 weeks will give me a lot of photo opportunity for my port-folio, a lot of field experience, and the chance to live the beat of a big daily.

In the afternoon, I went to a photo workshop held by Jacques Nadeau (photographer for Le Devoir), Bernard Breault (photographer for La Presse), the photo editor of La Presse and the two layers of La Presse (for legal issues when taking pictures). That was pretty interesting. You can’t wait to go shoot after you watch Bernard Breault’s best pictures for 2 hours!

The fun part lies behind how I got there and what was this workshop all about.

The event was organised by Groupe Contact image. They sponsor the World Press Photo exhibition in Montreal. They asked emerging young photographer to submit their porte-folio and the 20 selected won their place at the workshop. At the end of the day, we were given a theme. We have until October 3 to submit our photo essay. The winner will be unveiled October 6, at the second workshop given by Ami Vitale, a World press photo winner. The chosen one will be exposed at the World Press. Amazing, isn’t? The theme is “The secret life of teens”. That is not easy!

Friday (that is yesterday while I’m writing this), the Pioneer officially went to press. Later on during the day, it came back published. My feature was postponed to the next issue, but my other story about the fish habitat on the Moira River was published. It is unfortunately not in the web version of the paper.

Today, I spent two hours in Picton, one of the most beautiful town in Canada, to cover something (you’ll see next Friday what it is). Tonight, I’ll bring the 300mm because I will be at the last OHL Belleville Bulls exhibition game. For my fellow friends and family in Quebec, the OHL is the equivalent of the Ligue de Hockey Junior Majeur du Québec – LHJMQ – were the Remparts de Québec play. The Ottawa 67's will be visiting. This will be the highest level of sport I ever covered. Neat!

Tomorrow is photo selection, photo editing, and maybe I’ll start to write the text that goes along.