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MARDI LE 3 MARS
POLE POSITION : NOUVELLE EMISSION D’ANNE-MARIE LOSIQUE

Demain mardi : pendant 48 heures, Anne-Marie Losique s’enferme dans un club branche du centre-ville de Montreal avec les 30 plus belles danseuses du Quebec ! Encore une fois, Anne-Marie franchit de nouvelles frontieres televisuelles et s’eclate la ou personne n’est encore alle avec un concept incendiaire : Pole Position Quebec

Quelle region possede les meilleures danseuses ? Une competition audacieuse mettant en vedette des clubs de danseuses de six regions de la province : Montreal (Kingdom Gentleman's Club), Mont-Tremblant (Bar Salon le Faucon Bleu de Mont-Tremblant), St-Hyacinthe (Bar Le Zipper), Mirabel (Bar Le Garage), Berthierville (Le Body Girl de Berthierville) et de Longueuil (Cabaret Doric).



* La diffusion est prevue a la tele a la carte des mai.

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That's the official press release. Now my story.

I told my editor I would cover this event without really reading the press release. I saw the name Anne-Marie Losique and tv show and thought, just go do it. It'll be news sensationalistic (is that a word cuz if it ain't I'm still using it) similar to taking pictures of a train wreck.

I read the press release properly after I said I would do it. My instincts told me to not back down and just do it. So I did.

Anne-Marie Losique is a kind of local celebrity. Celebrity might not be the right word. More like notorious. She used to VJ on Musique Plus. Her dad is known for running the Montreal Film Festival (before it went to the dumps). Ben Affleck did an interview with her sitting on his lap but he's also been known to hang out at Wanda's during Jennifer Lopez and before Jennifer Garner. Losique is now known to do these notorious pay per view tv shows or those really late night cable channels.

Well, I must say whomever did the PR people on this really know how to spin the event. I went thinking there would be an actual pole competition. I want to believe that it can be acrobatic and gymnastic like. Ahem. Not quite. They focused on the strip club theme instead and no poles to be seen.

Actually, I showed up late. Everything happens late in Montreal so I figured if I was 10 minutes late, I would still be on time. Who knew, news photographers were such spanksters. Supposedly, they showed up really early and sped up the process. So I missed the whole photo op thing. One of the other photographers showed me what I missed. Basically, it was the Hawaiian Tropic bikini line up.I scrambled to get as many shots as I could get. Luckily my editor called their people and they helped me get a few shots as most of the girls had disappeared and so did the real photographers who have print deadlines. A few spanksters were left and me.

I managed to take a few pictures of the judge. I didn't catch her name but she was a pretty girl from Halifax, Nova Scotia, underneath all that caked up a la Hugh Hefner wife wanna be stuff. The thing that gets me is that these girls are just that, girls. She was sweet and genuine. You could see she was really was pretty underneath it all. She smiled easily and seemed sincerely surprised that she was getting so much attention. She's probably smarter than she gives off if she manages to make her living traveling across Canada. I want to attribute ambitious to her personality and I have to admit she was likable.

Then we had the Suicide Girls. One girl kept taking off her top and pushing her boobies like they needed to be put back into place and did one interview sans bikini top. It kind of bothered me but I suppose for her, it was just another day of work. I kept looking at these two and thinking they must barely be over 18. Take off the "stuff" and they're just regular girls. Was it wrong for me to take their picture even though they wanted us to? They are someone's daughters... I dunno...

Then there's Anne-Marie Losique who stayed around, did interviews and posed for the cameras. I quietly took a few shots of her as she interviewed which would have been fine by me but the PR guy set up a scene for the remaining photographers but I think mostly for me and another guy who must have missed the beginning too. We got the make out session. This woke me up as to where I was. I can hear you guys, "OooOOOoOo girls, you're so lucky." Personally, I don't consider myself lucky but I am surprised at myself. This event has made me realize that I really am a photojournalist. I wasn't shocked on site, I focused on getting pictures. I wasn't freaked out too much by the set or the boobies or spanksters. I did my job and left. I also didn't touch anything. When I got outside of the club, I realized what I had done. I suppose this is where I also mention that television has numbed me. Having watched Californication and Nip/Tuck, this was not shocking as I thought it would be.

When it was all over, I stood outside in the cold for a while to set my bearings straight. Not sure my moral compass is back

29/365 After 2 Photocamp sessions (09 and 2010) on panoramas with @ASBO_Allstar FINALLY downloaded the superb HugIn software (free) on my MacBookPro. OK, so I haven't really run through the tutorials, or even pulled out my notes from PhotoCamp, but I just wanted to give it a very quick try. So, took a load of snaps of the kids when they were entranced by Angelina Ballerina on TV tonight before bed (only time they're still enough for multiple shots). iPhone camera, which meant the exposures varied from shot to shot etc., and I don't suppose I did a very good handheld job of keeping the sensor in roughly the same place for each piece. But I dropped it all into HugIn, and although it told me it was a terrible match and needed manual sorting out, I've loaded it here 'as is'. I think it's done a pretty remarkable job for a piece of free software that I haven't much of a clue how to use...!

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