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Rangefinder
Magazine Profile: Christian Lalonde by
Lou Jacobs Jr.
Christian Lalonde grew up in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and “started to play with photography” in high school during his pre-university year. He says, “I photographed scenes, but mostly shot my friends in various situations.” He was hooked, and went on to study photography at a local college, La Cite Collegiale, where he graduated in 1996. When I asked about influences, he told me, “My teachers were very influential. They saw potential in me and really pushed me to develop both my technical and artistic sides.” Other influences, he added, were magazine ads, TV commercials, music videos and architecture, and the latter is still a personal photographic favorite. “I also enjoy European ‘urban’ magazines with their great style,” he adds. After graduation Chris was offered a position doing food photography in one of Canada’s largest commercial studios, located in Montreal. “I did that for about five months,” he states, “and was then offered a job teaching studio lighting at my alma mater, so I returned to Ottawa. During the following two years I taught, and shot part time.
“ While teaching, I met up with Anthony and Frank Cava from Photolux Studio, and in 1997 they offered me the opportunity to develop a commercial photography ‘division’ within the studio. I accepted with enthusiasm. At the time, the Cavas did mainly wedding and portrait photography, with only occasional commercial jobs.” Photolux is a second generation studio. Anthony and Frank’s father started the business about 35 years ago and the sons took it over in the ‘90s. Now three relatively young men keep busy enough to hire another photographer in the summer to help shoot weddings. In general the Cavas handle weddings and portraits, while Chris concentrates mostly on corporate, architectural, food, product and editorial jobs. “We’re a full service studio,” Chris says, “able to be busy all year around.”
The Photolux studio is on two levels, and includes reception, meeting areas and work space on the first floor. On the second level is the photography studio and digital suite, a room with gray walls to avoid color casts, a MAC G4 with all the trimmings, a high-end film scanner and lots of backup hard drives. Here on a large screen all digital imaging is performed before it is offered to clients. Much work is done with White Lightning strobes in the studio plus Lumedyne min packs on location. Their work load is about 50-50, in and out of the studio. Chris had a semester of Photoshop in college, then learned the ins and outs of the software on his own from books and experimentation. He says he’s picked up tricks and knows his way around thoroughly enough to teach a seven-week night course on basic Photoshop. He works on all selected digital images at Photolux, “from basic calibration to retouching to complex photo montages,” he explains, adding, “One hundred percent of my commercial jobs go through the computer before ending up on the client’s table.” Presently, Chris shoots predominantly digital, using a Nikon D1X, but he adds, “We’re waiting to receive our new 14N cameras from Kodak. It’s a 14 megapixel SLR camera that will help us increase our image quality for clients. I’ve been doing digital for about three years, and I estimate I’ve used it about 95% of the time for the last two years. We are now into our third generation of investment in digital.” Film cameras Chris favors— when special lighting effects are required to create the image—are the Hasselblad and a Sinar large format cameras, but he explains, “I use these less and less as quality increases with digital. Occasionally I use the 4x5 to create lighting montages and multiple exposures for special effects.
“ For example, I photographed a telephone with tungsten light on the background (one exposure). I then did a pull focus on the 4x5 camera (I changed the focus to create a black halo around the phone). In the third exposure I lighted the phone with tungsten light, and in the final exposure I painted light on the phone with a mini-flashlight. This can take about three to five minutes per shot, and no two shots are the same.The final results can be startling. “ I also use film for personal projects with the Hasselblad X-Pan, a 35mm true panoramic format camera (24 x 65mm) that I really love.” Referring to a long vertical image of a man leaning against a car, Chris adds, “it was done with the X-Pan on Fuji Provia F 35mm during the 2003 WPPI convention in Las Vegas.” That’s also where and when Chris was nicknamed “Money,” when it was discovered that he had been commissioned to create the images to be used for the new Canadian five-dollar bill. It’s a winter scene composed of seven images. Chris enjoys food photography, which begins with preparation by stylists and continues into careful lighting so you can almost taste the picture. He says, “One of my favorite lenses for editorial food is the 50mm f/1.4 Nikon D lens because of its limited depth of field. I also like the 60mm macro, though I use zoom lenses most of the time.”
Asked about his personal work, Chris explained, “I like to shoot architecture because there’s a fascinating discipline about it. I also like to photograph people and urban scenes such as details of store fronts or street corners. I’m working on a long term project showing funny things in the front yards of homes, the kind that make you wonder what they were thinking. I get an occasional urge to shoot for myself in the studio sometimes, and that work is mostly people or things that I can use in digital montages. I do less personal work now that I am busier, but I try not to neglect it. I like to paint and draw and create sculptures, though I haven’t in a while, but I think often about getting back to other hand-done media as a contrast to photography.” To keep his hand into teaching, Chris returns once a year to the college where he studied to give presentations and lead a seminar for second-year students. “It’s great to see what students are doing. They can be inspiring because they have few limits, with no clients expressing disappointment to hold them back.”
The elegant Photolux Studio website [www.photoluxstudio.com] is divided into segments, each preceded by quotes from photographic masters, showing a reverence for the past influencing the present. Here are the quotes: The commercial section starts with Pete Turner: “Ultimately, simplicity is the goal of every art, and achieving simplicity is one of the hardest things to do. Yet it’s easily the most essential.” Prior to the wedding section Ernst Haas says: “A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?” And a wonderful observation from Dorothea Lange precedes the portrait section: “Photography really takes an instant out of time by holding it still.” Chris observes, “I enjoy those quotes, especially the one about simplicity. In my work I try to see things simply and keep the images simple… when possible. I used to preach simplicity to my students, telling them to start with one light and build around it as needed. Too complicated lighting can disguise the subject.”
When I asked about competition and promotion, Chris estimated there are about ten well known commercial studios in Ottawa. And he continued, “We show our portfolio to agencies and to potential clients, and we do both postal and e-mail advertising. We have an agent who brings in some work, but most assignments come directly to the studio. Our website has been really great in showing our work widely, and has brought in international clients such as Ives St-Laurent Beauty, Estee Lauder, Sony and Genivar, an international engineering firm. Our current website is the third design we’ve put online, and we update the work approximately every four months.
In 2003, for the second year in a row, The Professional Photographers Association of Canada awarded Photolux photographer Chris Lalonde the prestigious title of “Canadian Commercial Photographer of the Year.” He explains, “They select five finalists from across Canada, and I was delighted to be honored again. I always try to show a variety of work, I think that’s the key. The four images I submitted for 2003 were an editorial portrait of a gentleman in one of his many restaurants, workers loading a freight car, the exterior of a building, and a food shot done for a corporate hotel website and a magazine.” Chris received inspiration a few years back when he saw Yuri Dojc, a commercial photographer from Toronto, speak at the National Convention in Canada. In short, Dojc said, “If you’re not on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” Chris comments, “I have that in mind every time I make an image, and I try to push myself further. I’m hard on myself and I try to do various subjects in different ways.” He’s a young man yet, but his present may compete with his future. Lou Jacobs Jr. is the author of 25 how-to photography books, the latest of which, PHOTOGRAPHER’S LIGHTING HANDBOOK (Amherst Media) was recently published. He has taught at UCLA and Brooks, is a longtime member of ASMP, and enjoys shooting stock during his travels in the U.S. and abroad.
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