Above, with the camera Zenit E.

The Zenit E first appeared in 1967. It would become an enormous success thanks to its low price-tag compared to the other reflex cameras of the time.
It was heavy, I would compare it to a hammer. It was not very dependable; however it allowed a great number of amateur to the joys of reflex photography. It was equipped with an external lightmeter (visible above the lens) made of selenium, uncoupled.
The indicator needle is on the left-hand cover, close to the film winding button. It’s on this button that you could adjust the lightmeter and the film’s light sensitivity.
The viewfinder is particularly dark, through it the world is grey.

Next, the great leap: to become a FREELANCER, to settle in the USA, …
To never know if you will earn money the following month …
Book keeping, agenda, marketing, client satisfaction, logistics, etc.…
Well, I’ve been doing this now for 35 years.

I switched continents. The United States of America: every hippy’s dream. Long live freedom and efficiency!
My first passion: Mathematics. The second: Photography. Third: Anglo-saxon culture.

Publications and clients : Scuba World (U.K.), Applied Arts (Canada), Living (U.S.A.), Photo (France), Sport Diving (Australia), American Photo (U.S.A.), Popular Photo (U.S.A.),
Asian Diver (Singapour), Glamour and Boudoir Photography (U.S.A.), Photographie Magazine (France), Hebdo (New Caledonia), Glamour Quest (U.S.A.),
Mega Press (Japan), Photographer's Forum (U.S.A.), Photo Sélection (Canada), Photo Asia (Singapour), Stern (Germany), Glamour Photographer Magazine (U.S.A.),
Diver (Canada), Newmen (France), Bellevue (Germany), Télé 7 jours (New Caledonia), Rodale Scuba Diving (U.S.A.), Penthouse (Australia),
Océans (France), BBC Wild Life Magazine (U.K.), Simply Living (Australia), Picture Perfect (U.S.A.),
Photography International Magazine (New Zealand), Photo Technique (U. K), Universal Studios (USA), etc.

Arctic, 1984: leaving from Bettles, Alaska, population 12, close to the North Pole, with the intrepid Barry Moss who now lives in Seffner, Florida.
It was Barry who initiated me, earlier, to glacier-climbing. We left together from Florida and we took planes which became smaller and smaller, and it became colder and colder.
Coming straight from Florida, it took me a week to start feeling well at - 40° (interestingly, this is where the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales meet up, -40° C = - 40° F)
At 40 degrees Celsius below zero, photography becomes very difficult: the films become brittle, the batteries stop working, the cold metal rips off your eyebrows, the frost created by your breath obstructs the viewfinder, you have 20 seconds max without gloves to change the film roll by pulling off your external glove (there is another, thinner polypropylene glove underneath).

TEXT AND PHOTOS: CHRISTIAN FOURNIER
All of the photos were taken in Alaska, on Mendenhall Glacier.
Mendenhall Glacier is a large glacier in southeast Alaska, about 10 km from Juneau, the capital city.
The season is, of course summer. It is often nice out and sweaters are often stowed back into backpacks.
The special aspect of this glacier is that the Americans built an asphalt road that brings tourists right in front. A visitor center has also been built on the edge of the lake beside the glacier. This makes it the easiest to visit glacier in the world.
For climbers like us, it is also much easier: we park our car at the visitor centre, then we walk an hour or two along the small mountain trail which follows alongside the glacier. When the glacier becomes accessible, that is to say without two many crevasses or frequent landslides, as is the case on the shredded end of a glacier, we lace up our crampons beneath our mountain shoes and jump onto the ice.

And it becomes fantastical: we discover crevasses, streams (the surface ice melts), waterfalls, small blue lakes, tunnels (formed by the flowing surface water), and caves with crystal walls. We each have crampons, a pick, and a rope. This allows us to climb even very steep slopes with relative ease, even vertical walls. We also like to jump across small walls, sticking ourselves to the opposite sides like flies. And I, the photographer, descend to the bottom to immortalize my companions who seem to fly above my head.
The only danger along our hikes across the glacier is that the surface on which we are walking can collapse. So it is important to listen for the sounds of flowing water so as to avoid walking upon the roof of an underground river, and to “tap” the terrain with our pick.
I love the silence of the glacier: only the sounds of trickling water and the crackling of the ice. I love the different blues that the sun creates through the ice. I love the silences shared between climbers. I love sharing, through my photos, the beauty of what I’ve seen.

In the first row, Dominique Strauss Khan, called DSK for short, the Minister of Finances at the time.
DSK demanded, at the last minute, to get out of the line, to stand out from the "crowd", spoiling my 100.

The 25-megapixel Nikon D3x camera is connected to the computer for instant viewing of the high-definition images via the software Nikon Camera Control Pro.
No animals were harmed during the making of this photo session. Thanks to Christine Naït Sidnas for her assistantship.

In 1997, I taught part-time at the International Photography School in Paris, Spéo, and also, for them, I taught Peter Lindberg (and yes, he is an important photographer, at his home in rue de Savoie in Paris. We both photographed Petra Lindblad!), as well as the Aga Khan, all the sales departments of Nikon France, all the sales departments of Fuji France (I even commuted to Cannes for them), and Canon, Konica, Minolta, Prophot and at FNAC.

I met, among others, Pierre-Yves Mahé, the founder, Pascal Guiraud who would become a photographer in the Angers region, Cécile Loucher (Cil de Kolda) who would, following my advice, study at the best Photography School in the world, the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California, and who now lives in Brazil, Didier Loseleur, the great software genious who is now the head of the Network at Hachette, Patrick Carreau the photo-engraver, Christian Malette, a gifted still-life photographer in Paris, Florence Coufourier who would become editor at MaxPPP, the largest French press agency, Christian Van Nanja, who would become a freelance photographer in Paris working for Vandystadt and Philippe Auger who has since become a renowned photographer.

My attitude is very professional.

I put emphasis on transparency.

My invoices are detailed and the bill corresponds to them, except for unexpected expenses along with the client’s agreement.
Educated in the American Way, for me, the Client is King.
I don’t make any photos for myself, no, my goal is that they please the client and that they coincide perfectly with the client’s expectations.
I am resourceful and I go all out to ensure the photos that my clients are looking for.
I communicate clearly and I write up full estimates to avoid surprises or ambiguities, also keeping their feasibility in mind.
I am organized, punctual, and polite. I always prepare my equipment in advance (I make check-lists, in Frenglish!) as well as my road book. My equipment is at all times protected in Pelican or Tenba cases, even the tripods.

When you’re with me, there are no “Sorry, I’m out of batteries”, “Sorry, I got lost on the way”, “Sorry, my flash broke”.
I save all of my data, so my photos as well, in every format: double SD cards, Raid, external hard-drive in the bank, etc.…
I have doubles of all of my photography equipment, save for the car. My studio is equipped with many alarms, including MyFox, remotely controlled with my iPhone, an armoured entry door, and bars on the balcony.
I do all kinds of photography, except paparazzi (I only photograph consenting people) and wars (except fake ones).

I can light up anything, because in the last 40 years I’ve had the time to see everything.

Very very rarely do I miss a photo. See my column of “Missed shots”.

I am reachable at any time, landline, cellphone, fax, email, SMS, mail. My iPad and my iPhone, which contain my agenda and my address book, is updated every evening.

Contrary to many too-young photographer, I don’t have the need to constantly look at my camera’s LCD screen to know if a photo is good.
20 years of film photography oblige, I am able to concentrate on what is happening around me without missing a thing. I know in my bones the right distance, the right focus, the right aperture to choose so that 3 people speaking in a close group are sharp and the background blurry enough so that they stand out.
I don’t have any colorimetric problems nor colour-correction issues because I learned to do so very rapidly on cruiseships with 4000 color photos printed per week.

I have had an excellent grasp of Photoshop ever since it’s version 1.0 in 1994.

I am very well referenced on Google. For the last ten years if you “professional photographer Paris”, I appear on the first page with my address.

My website has required a lot of work. Designed and constructed by myself (I have read the Dreamweaver and GoLive manuals in detail). The website displays more than 200,000 photos organized by theme, including compilations, flash animations, texts from articles, videos, sound files, high-definition photos which allow you to zoom, my price list, a search engine for the entire site, a blog and practical information. Constantly updated. 55 domain names purchased.

I get about 24,000 visitors per month, which is a lot for a freelance photographer.

I think I’m very good at convention photography.

I have this gift: I can analyse a scene in the blink of an eye and know exactly where I need to stand, with which lens and which parameters for depth of field and shutter speed to get the best photo.
My ex, Nicole, a mathematical supergenius, who often accompanied me for photographing gigs, was always astonished when we compared our photos. Mine were always better, more beautiful and perfect, without possibility of improvement.
Nicole is intellectual, and I, visual. I can’t help it.
Without having to move, I can envision in an instant, mentally, what I would see in my viewfinder.
While moving over to the spot I’ve chosen, I set my camera settings and compute the specifications (shooting from a lower angle? A higher angle? A little to the left? Greater depth of field? Less? Will 1/125th of a second be enough to immobilise my subject? Lower the intensity of my flash to preserve the ambiant lighting? Tell a joke to distract my model? Is the CEO’s tie straight? Reflections in the mirror? Offset my flash to the left to better illuminate the scene?).

I can make myself invisible in a crowd. I have even stood for many minutes in front of a group of three in conversation, taking 15 photos without being noticed. This allows me to take photos that are more spontaneous.
When I take a photo, it is good, and I’ll challenge anyone who thinks they can do better.

I know how to make a scene elegant, even when it isn’t. All you need is the right angle, the right parameters.
Example: here is the comment made by Étienne Lemaire, the man in charge of the event agency Jonathan Événements, on the subject of a builder's convention: “I’ve had the time the look at and even to contemplate the images that you’ve “captured” in the Bigmat lounge. Once again, your work is magnificent, reproducing the ambiances, the gestures, the emotions, the men and the machines, everything finds its place in a photo report that is precise, beautiful, and irreproachable. Thank you for this extraordinary transposition of an absolutely ordinary lounge. Cordialy, Étienne Lemaire”.

Now, thanks to digitalization and 64GB memory cards, you can take photos without counting, even in RAW format. This allows bad photographers to take a thousand photos, often at random, spending their time looking at their LCD screens and missing the scene around them.
Once my photo has been taken, which is already good, I might take a few more, such as if the subject blinks. So I take one good photo with slight variations. Then I go immediately to the next. Next, next, next. Click, click, click.

This process is almost unconscious. While taking my photos, I can continue speaking to my client, changing batteries, looking around to see if I am bothering someone or in the way of a movie camera, and anticipating my next angle. Next, next, next. Click, click, click.

I adapt to every circumstances, I wear many hats. I don’t take the same photos when I am working for the caterer as when I am working for the event organizers or for the end client.
I am anything but timid. 10,000 photos per week on the cruiseships cured me of that! I can tell the president to straighten his tie. In fact, I must tell him, because if the photo doesn’t turn out well, it is the photographer’s fault.

I can make any group laugh, in any language, well, almost.

Examples of my Event Photography clients: Polaroid, Anaé, L'Oréal, Nuages Blancs, Pfizer, Essilor, 3i, GMF, BigMat, Evolis, Medef, Agefiph, Medtronic, Genzyme, Tollens, MacDo, Siemens, Guittet, Toyota, Swarovsky, Aixam, System@tic, Freescale, Savings Banks, Weber, Kensington, Unesco, Euromoney, Denis & Co, W9, VW, Samsung, Le Figaro, Intel, EDF, GE, Garmin, ZTE, FNAC, Banque Populaire, Seb, IBM, Bayer, Janssen, Philips, Tom Tom, Volvo, TeleZ, Acta Fabula, Bahlzen, Camping Car, Rent a Car, Financial Times, IBM, LeGan, Chrysler, Intel, Hagen, Shopi, Le Mondial Coiffure, etc...