Eric Demay

A tip

As a photographer for some time now, this is my best tip for making good pictures:

A story lies behind each photograph. It doesn’t need to be immediately understandable but the photographer should be able to speak about the subject, the setting, the context. It should, somehow or another, say something. How or why the picture is taken is often a story in itself.

A story

While being in Regina two weeks ago, we took a stroll through our old neighborhood. We passed through the school yard where I used to play, remembering the stories and tales we made up and played at recess, the wooden structures we used to climb and challenge from. Then, walking down the route I used to take every day back from kindergarden at noon (a big two blocks away from home), quickly getting home to the dinner table where lunch was awaiting. Then, turning the corner, gazing at the old house we stayed used to live in.

This house is where I stayed in till I turned 6 and we moved to Quebec. I was young but I do have many vivid memories of the place and it does bring back many memories and I am quite fond of this one:

My parents held a garage sale a sunny spring Saturday morning. We had already planned to move out to Quebec, so they were many things we needed to get rid of before le grand départ. They had positioned tables along each side of the driveway, with the usual garage sale stuff displayed as it could on the tables and against the garage doors.

Learning about this, my inherent sense of kidtrepreneur immediatly recognized the opportunity for me to sell something and thus make some money as well. Heck, the people were already gathering and walking up to the driveway looking at the stuff, might as well take use of that customer presence and attention span and make $omething out of it.

So I made paper fans. Simple enough for a 5 yo to quickly make yet unique and distinctive for it to have some sort of marketable value (or so I thought). Besides, it was quite a hot morning, the people will need to freshen up with this kind of sun.

I gathered a bunch of nice white sheets of letter paper, a few of my favorite colorful wax crayons and started designing paper fans. Quickly realizing the amount of time I spent coloring instead of selling was time somewhat wasted¹, the fan graphic design eschewed from meticulous and distinctive drawings to abstract motifs of careless long fat wax crayon strokes. In french, we call it des barbeaux. “It looks like art”, I said to myself, “and besides, folded up and all, the colors are valued for their decoration purposes not their ability depict a perfect landscape or a cow/horse/dog. Let’s keep our priorities straight, the fan’s main purpose is to make wind².” After coloring both sides, I carefuly folded the sheets in accordion pleats, stapling it at the handle, and voilà: a beautiful paper fan, a beautiful product.

I then rushed outside with my small collection of fans, made room at the end of the table to display them properly and stood by them proudly.

I waited patiently. People were glancing at the fans but without taking interest in them. What’s the matter? Yeah I’m a kid, yeah they look homemade but that shouldn’t stop somebody from asking. I started to doubt my venture. Should I have spent more time being a bit more careful with the folding and the coloring? Was it the colors I chose?

A brushy bearded cyclist who had just bought a lamp from my father’s, while leaving the garage sale, noticed me and my fans.

— Hey there young man, are these for sale?

I was surprised at first. Nobody had spoken to me yet. Sudden interest in the fans took me by surprise. This was my chance, time for my sales pitch. I was excited, but all I could do, as timid as I was back then, was to nod shyly.

— How much are you selling them for?

GOSH! I spent so much time making the fans, I hadn’t even though of that. The price? What did I know of money? As much as I was there to make some, I had no clue to what it was all worth. In panic, I stared at my father who was standing near, smiling. The man looked at him too, smiled and turned back at me:

— I’ll give you a quarter for that one. Sounds fair?

I nodded shyly again. He handed a quarter, took a fan placed it in his bicycle basket, thanked my father and I, and took off. I, for my part, couldn’t hold it in anymore. I. Had. Made. Twenty. Five. Cents! My first 25¢! YEAAAH! I remember quite clearly running immediately to the house, excitedly telling my mother as I rushed up the stairs to my room to then slide the quarter through the opening of my porcelain piggy bank. I shook it for it wasn’t empty anymore.

That sale was my first and only that day. I got bored and went off to play. But in the end, it didn’t matter much. I sold one and that was more than enough to make me happy. And it still does.

And that’s the story behind this picture.

• 1. I later learned this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
• 2. And I sometimes wonder how I ended up studying design of all things.