Someone asked me why I chose to carry a camera to the race instead of just running.
As I explained earlier, it was to be able to better tell the story. And I really wanted to capture the run from someone who is in it.
Photography is something I’ve always been fascinated with even as a kid. I wanted to join the camera club in grade school but I didn’t own one. I would borrow my dad’s cam once in a while to take shots and experiment but it would only be many years later when I decided to take it up more seriously.
I try to learn as much as I can from my fellow Ateneo Sports Shooters who are really good and awesome at what they do. When I see their stuff, I wish I could shoot like that. I don’t have the equipment or the experience yet and hopefully, I’ll get there.
However, several years ago, I was given the opportunity by San Miguel Corporation to take part in a photo exhibit at the Tent in the Fort. Not bad for someone with hardly any experience. Client and our subjects (former Philippine Olympians) loved many of the shots that they asked for copies that had to be blown up several sizes larger than the original. I’ve never posted them online after one known photographer copied a pose that I asked Tony Leviste to do several years ago.
My trying to be a complete journalist was inspired by Kevin Sites among many others. So you can imagine how difficult it is to lug not only a laptop but a camera and videocam. I’ve hardly shared with my initial foray into journalism that entailed riding in cop cars late at night. It something that lasted for a couple of months that left me shaken and changed in my view and opinion of policemen. I wish I had a camera then for what I saw and experienced. I moved away from that kind of reporting to features and sports until I chose a supposedly more sedate job of copywriting for several ad agencies.
Like writing, I’m in photography for good. And obviously, it’s still a learning process as I try to get better at it.
When I began to take my own pictures and shoot my own videos several years ago, I think it changed something in the local reporting scene. At that point no one was doing it. I would place them on my blog and on ateneo.edu.
Now I know that some editors of major broadsheets require their writers to do the same.
I try to make what I shoot an extension of how I write -- in depth and personal and from an unobtrusive side. For a while, I tried to be like my fellow Ateneo Sports Shooters. But I’m not them so I choose to shoot them another way.
I’ve always ached to do more than sports. I’ve done lots of PR over the years including Senate reports. I’ve done several documentaries that have been shown on television. But the one thing I’ve always wanted to get into is conflict reporting.
Yes, that means going to a war zone. Some friends of mine would ask me if I get frightened by the thought of being in the midst of a shooting war. Of course, I am. Who wouldn’t be? But if you go you gotta go.
Where’s that coming from? From the late Robert Capa, Sydney Schanberg, Christiane Amanpour, and Kevin Sites. Aside from ESPN and HBO, my fave channels are CNN, AL Jazeera, the BBC, National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel. I read the New York Times every day, I buy Time and Fortune magazines. I used to buy Soldier of Fortune. I read lots of books on a wide variety of topics.
Last year, I applied for a job in Afghanistan. Hahaha. Hopefully, something happens there. I’m really trying to make that happen.
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