Autobiography

My beginnings

Each photo has its own legend!

At two years of age, I was already photgraphed in the Studio!
Born in the Poitou (Northwest France), here with my two years of age in evidence, I wasn’t quite the photographer, yet, but it was my first introduction to a real photographer, the one who later took me under his wing. Who was to know?

At school with the photograph-scholar
Later, in elementary school, another opportunity to participate in wholesale mugging, the competition among the other cut-ups to outdo each other was fierce.

A portrait sitting
This is about the time of my first discovery of the marvelous alchemy of photographic development, watching the blank page turn magically into an image still remains one of the most seminal moments of my life. The age of 14 was when it all started, and I don’t just mean photography. It was my black & white period, with that always trusty “Instamatic”.

My inceptional apprenticeship
I learned the metier from the ground up.
-the first formats: 4x5 and 18x24, on Rollei and Voigtlander
-developing B&W, then the enlargements done in the old style.

In the Army's sights
Well-trained by this time, I was the photographer taking pictures of the 2000 recruits at an army station, commemorating all the attendant events of army life, including marriages and reconnaisance. It was good training, a perfect job for me if you consider that it was the army after all.

My color beginnings
Back to the homestead in Poitou, I learned all about color photography, especially developing skills, then a decade in Paris running labs for a variety of employers. Evolving technology, evolving equipment, several millions of photos later, I was becoming a professional among professionals.

My "Colors of Provence" period

Leaving Paris for new horizons, the south of France, glorious Provence, drew me in with its almost constant availability of astonishing sunlight. With more than 28,000 miles behind me, my love of Provence, and for nature itself, is just beginning to be satiated.

Just a shadow of myself!
More than three thousand photographs, the fruit of this photographic love affair, are available on this website, and in an easy catalogued fashion for your viewing pleasure, and contemplative purchase. The photographs cover all four of the seasons of the year, including fields of lavender, the multi-colored ochre cliffs, and the traditions that the land carries...

My photos have been used for advertising, general publicity, and illustration purposes. I pay special attention and care in the framing of the shots, their graphical and artistic composition, mastering the light always, for color contrast, and harmony.

My "digital" period

Through it all, my fascination with “trick” photography has been a prevailing passion. When the digital world was born, I was in 7th heaven. The real work started in 1989 for me. Taking this part of my training seriously, I was able to assemble a group of 60 graphic artists all caught up in the same passion.

Primary colors

The skill to assemble and compose, arriving at a final creation, the creative aspect, that is the priority always. Integration of multifaceted elements requires the mastering of “colormetering”, perspective, and the assimilation of appropriate depth of field and light tonalities.

Personal research

It is always on my mind when assembling images to give them an inspirational quality, to invite the mind and the eye to “fly” into my own imagination and concept. Sometimes this ascension is evident, at other times more subtle, but the object is to place the viewer in an instance of departure, of a flight of fancy, to a destination undefined.

Illustration for a magazine

I treat allegorical themes with impunity, playing off generic illlustrations, adding to them imaginary scenes (take-offs from real ones). But then its easier to explain through the work itself I think, so... enjoy a virtual journey into what is essentially the far reaches of my all too active photographic eye, and mind.

Illustration for Club Med

A weekend in Venice

One of the nice things about being a photographer is that I can live vicariously through the photos of my clients. I was starting to linger more than once a week in a nether world of Venetian images when I finally decided (after ten years no less) to actually tear myself away from the constraints of running my own lab to spend a weekend in Venice, during its Carnival.
	I was lucky to do this during a winter period, which gave me a very good light. It is a pleasure to be able to bring you into this winter world through the series of images which follow. I've quite fallen in love with Venice, as a consequence of this weekend project, and I've put in place a page of Webcams which (when they're actually working!) convey as best they can its waterborne enchantment.

Publications

Octobre 1996
	“A specialist of the image, working as easily in traditional photography techniques as digital, Remy Cantin has proved himself a rich interpreter of diverse visions, and more particulary of Provençal landscapes, the quality of which recently won him a Winter-month page in the official Nikon calendar.”

“A talented illustrator-photographer, a specialist in all lab work and trick photography, his talents extend to advanced digital processing. To this he now adds his experience to the use of animation in multi-disciplinary, dynamic imagery media presentations”.
	“His digital work can be seen in numerous publications, professional and otherwise (Le Photographe, Création Numérique, Chasseur d'Images, SVM Mac, etc...)”

Sale of Publishing Rights: :
-for the postcard editions
-for the tourist brochures and publicity layouts
Intermarché - Crédit Agricole - Total - Quo - Sopexa - Grand Livre du Mois - Guide Michelin- Gault & Millau - Le Temps retrouvé - Ca m'intéresse - Science & Vie - VSD, etc...

Publications of digital creations and press articles:
- Le Photographe .
- Chasseur d'images, Couverture + intérieurs.
- Le Méridional. .
- Vaucluse Magazine.
- Création Numérique, Couverture + 5 pages.
- SVM Mac, sur CD-Rom / Galerie des lecteurs.
- Création Numérique, sur CD-Rom / 1000 photographies de Provence.

First prize for poster competitions
organised by Canson, Hewlet-Packard and Création Numérique :
1st prize : one plotter A1
Digital creations for multimedia presentations
CD-Rom creations, and for websites

... and similarly

Established in Avignon since 1991, I exercise fully there my metier of Laboratory Photographer. Equipped with the Fuji Frontier 350, I process all photos, traditional silver-based or digital, with the same motivational spirit that inspired my very first image... (see more information by going on the laboratory's website)

Retour au Sommaire Back to Summary

	Born in the Poitou (Northwest France), here with my two years of age in evidence, I wasn’t quite the photographer, yet, but it was my first introduction to a real photographer, the one who later took me under his wing. Who was to know?
	Later, in elementary school, another opportunity to participate in wholesale mugging, the competition among the other cut-ups to outdo each other was fierce.
	This is about the time of my first discovery of the marvelous alchemy of photographic development, watching the blank page turn magically into an image still remains one of the most seminal moments of my life. The age of 14 was when it all started, and I don’t just mean photography. It was my black & white period, with that always trusty “Instamatic”.
	I learned the metier from the ground up. -the first formats: 4x5 and 18x24, on Rollei and Voigtlander -developing B&W, then the enlargements done in the old style.
	Well-trained by this time, I was the photographer taking pictures of the 2000 recruits at an army station, commemorating all the attendant events of army life, including marriages and reconnaisance. It was good training, a perfect job for me if you consider that it was the army after all.
	Back to the homestead in Poitou, I learned all about color photography, especially developing skills, then a decade in Paris running labs for a variety of employers. Evolving technology, evolving equipment, several millions of photos later, I was becoming a professional among professionals.

Through it all, my fascination with “trick” photography has been a prevailing passion. When the digital world was born, I was in 7th heaven. The real work started in 1989 for me. Taking this part of my training seriously, I was able to assemble a group of 60 graphic artists all caught up in the same passion.
The skill to assemble and compose, arriving at a final creation, the creative aspect, that is the priority always. Integration of multifaceted elements requires the mastering of “colormetering”, perspective, and the assimilation of appropriate depth of field and light tonalities.
It is always on my mind when assembling images to give them an inspirational quality, to invite the mind and the eye to “fly” into my own imagination and concept. Sometimes this ascension is evident, at other times more subtle, but the object is to place the viewer in an instance of departure, of a flight of fancy, to a destination undefined.
I treat allegorical themes with impunity, playing off generic illlustrations, adding to them imaginary scenes (take-offs from real ones). But then its easier to explain through the work itself I think, so... enjoy a virtual journey into what is essentially the far reaches of my all too active photographic eye, and mind.