That Old Time Feeling: Lance and Myla
Aren’t they a gorgeous pair? Meet the beautiful Myla Barandog and the dashing Lance Shan, winners of Shutterfairy Photography’s first-ever styled engagement session giveaway (contest opened September last year; winners announced October)! I can’t remember exactly how many entries we got, only that there were quite a handful. I also can’t remember how my boss/mentor Malou Pages and I ended up picking this couple’s submission as the winning entry. What I do remember is that much of it had to do with the fact that theirs was the only entry that had been sent in by the fiancé (whereas everything else we got had been submitted by the fiancées)—I mean, how sweet is that, right, to have the guy participate in contests like this, when it’s usually the ladies who scramble to join in these sorts of things? To quote snippets from Lance’s e-mail entry: “My fiancée Myla has always loved [Shutterfairy Photography’s] style… She would always make me visit your Website… She already included you in our list of possible [vendors] for our upcoming wedding… Just a few days ago she learned about this contest, and she was very thrilled that she called me right away… I discouraged her from joining, and told her it would be impossible for us to win… But I want to surprise her, so I am writing this in the hopes of giving Myla her dream engagement session…” Who wouldn’t be floored after reading something like that? He even added: “She could be hardheaded at times, and so I’m expecting her to submit her own entry anytime soon.” Sure enough, we would receive an entry from Myla days later, but little did she know that her fiancé already beat her to it!
The Shutterfairy team flew to Davao (where Myla is based) to sit with the couple and discuss their desired concept/s and outcome/s. And they came to the meeting very prepared, it was as if they’d been planning this their whole lives! They showed us a few photos of couples clad in basic white-T-shirt-and-jeans combos (they liked the simplicity and cleanliness of this look), and of a room filled with balloons of all shapes and sizes. They also mentioned they liked the “vintage travel”-themed shoot that we did for one of our couples back in 2011 (especially the old trunks/suitcases). But the biggest thing that jumped at me about their mood boards was that they were chock-full of screencaps from the 2009 movie (500) Days of Summer. I asked why this was so, and Myla explained that they liked not just the “lightheartedness” of it all, but also how it looked timeless—i.e., you know it’s set in modern times because of how they talk, how they dress, the songs, etc., but there was something about the whole thing that lent an old-fashioned feel to the picture. I was quick to break it down for them, ‘cause it was exactly this element that made me fall in love with the film, too: the reason it worked was that there was a third character in play, and that was the architectural wonders of old L.A. , collectively—the Bradbury Building on Broadway (between W 3rd and W 4th, built in 1893), the Fine Arts Building on W 7th (between S Figueroa and S Flower, built in 1926), and the Eastern Columbia Building (built in 1930), to name a few. So I gave them an assignment: come up with a list of three or four of their favorite old (or old-looking) places, and that’s where we were going to be shooting!
I think it took them a little over a month to scout for places—they looked at a couple of places in Davao, and I think Lance did some research on a few historical spots in Cebu, too. Ultimately, they settled for Negros Oriental, not just because this was where Myla’s family has roots (in Dumaguete), but because it was home to three structures that she found to be very fascinating:
- An old bahay kubo-style fishing barn somewhere in Manjuyod (some 40 miles northwest of Dumaguete City), owned by the family of their wedding planner Grace Sycip-Romano (who herself had used the place as the site of her hacienda-themed wedding last year)
- The pretty Mojon Chapel in Bais City (some 29 miles northwest of Dumaguete, just before you get to Manjuyod), which some people erroneously cite as having Moorish architectural influence, but which actually borrows styles from Carpenter Gothic (no one can tell me when this structure was built, but my guess is it dates back to the early 1900s)
- The El Puerto Rico, a charming, privately-owned mansion that combines Baroque and Spanish Colonial (or hacienda) styles, located in Dumaguete’s El Pueblo Genovivo Subdivision (which the couple also booked for their wedding reception)
I’d only been to Dumaguete once (some two years ago, for the wedding of one of the first few couples I photographed), and I’d always known the place was rich with history, but I’d never imagined it would be this rich! After I got the e-mail from Myla containing pictures of the abovementioned locations, I wasted no time in asking her to book our plane tickets! From that moment on, I knew that this was going to be one of our best shoots this year!
Of course, at the same time, I knew that this was going to be one of the most challenging, as well, especially storyboard-wise: unlike most of our styled shoots, which are developed from a central idea, an overarching theme, this time we had to come up with a concept (or a string of concepts) based on our shooting locations. It’s hard when it’s a place/locale that serves as inspiration/starting point for a job, because then when you’re given a number of very disparate venues you’re not going to have it easy trying to piece the sequences together into something that makes sense! Thankfully I only had to look at the other variables in their initial mood boards and combine them with a number of inspirational elements already in my back pocket to help me build the scenes!
For the scenes that were to take place in the barn, I looked to the 1994 western movie 8 Seconds for some inspiration—except that, instead of having them don cowboy-inspired outfits (we’d already done that for another couple a few months back), I had them wear farmer-y clothes in denim and white, which was perfect because, as mentioned earlier, this very ensemble was a key feature in their mood boards. Myla’s outfit for this set was inspired by a photo of the actress Jessica Beil by Mario Testino in the February 2010 issue of Vogue, in which she wore oversize weathered denim overalls, and by a look in Ralph Lauren’s Spring 2010 Ready-to-Wear. I may have also been thinking of that one scene from the ninth episode of Season 4 of Sex and the City (“Sex and the Country”) where Carrie Bradshaw ends up in a puddle of mud in her boyfriend Aidan’s country retreat in Suffern, and you can see her struggling for her life in her denim overalls and dark olive green wellies. I loved that when we got to the barn we did not have to do a lot of cleaning—there were wood shavings scattered everywhere, but I decided against sweeping them into a corner because I liked how they added a rustic feel to the pictures. I also asked the couple to bring with them some farming tools—I wanted a couple of photos of them carrying a rake and a spade (we couldn’t find a pitchfork, you see), as a nod to famous 1930 Grant Wood painting American Gothic. I had to be careful not to make the whole thing look too masculine, of course, so I asked Jenny Hortillosa, who assisted me with the set decoration, to throw some horticultural elements into the mix, like an eggshell garden, and a bottle garden (complete with plant markers that bore love quotes/phrases with green thumb-y references, like, say, “Romance in bloom,” or “Secret garden”). (I would have loved for a couple of farm animals to be in the picture, too—couple of goats, or maybe even a couple of piglets—but then this was a fishing barn smack in the middle of a pond, so you can’t really expect goat husbandry or pig farming to take place in such a spot, right?)
As a rule, I (or we at Shutterfairy Photography) try not to reuse themes of shoots past, so when Myla said she really liked the aforementioned “vintage travel” theme that we did for one of our couples some two years back I had to discourage her from going down that route. But she insisted that, for the photos that were to be taken at the old chapel in Bais, she really wanted to make use of these postcard-pretty vintage-looking suitcases that she found in Dumaguete, so I asked to see them. Sure enough, when I laid my eyes on them—a pair of decorative wood-and-faux-leather suitcases with Parisian iconography scribbled all over them—I figured that they didn’t deserve to be punished just because I was unwilling to repeat concepts! I allowed her to use them, on the condition that she was not going to be wearing anything era-specific (the original “vintage travel”-themed shoot that we’d done had featured a kind of ‘60s look). We went for a look that, again, combined elements from Ralph Lauren Spring 2010 Ready-to-Wear: denim slip dress that called to mind blue work shirts, brown oxfords, and a grandmother-style long cableknit sweater cardigan in luscious lion brown (from Charlotte Russe).
For the photos that were going to be shot at the El Puerto Rico mansion, I wanted something a bit played down, just to offset the grandiosity of the place. I followed both Myla and Lance on Instagram, and that was how I found out they both loved to have coffee/tea together, and they both loved breakfast food (e.g., sweet breads), so I figured that a breakfast scene was in order. To set the mood I updated our boards with a 2002 Fabrizio Ferri photograph of the English musician Sting wearing a Tom Ford for Gucci kimono, lounging with his dogs at his Figline Valdarno, Tuscany, home. The kimono look was a little too fancy for my taste, though—I wanted something basic, modest, snug. So I asked the couple to show up in cotton pajamas in earth tones. The idea was for them to look like they’d just hopped out of bed, but not quite ready to slip out of that comfort zone just yet. It was kind of dark inside the El Puerto Rico, but I managed to find a solitary corner that was gorgeously lit, and that was where I set up our make-believe breakfast nook. I greatly enjoyed doing the set decoration for this scene. Mind you, nothing about that task was haphazard—everything was carefully laid out, from the placement of the croissants, to the slightly askew placement of the crochet table runner. I got so caught up in the set decoration part that I kind of overlooked the styling aspect (i.e., I forgot to pass on Myla’s grey-and-hot-pink polka dot socks—well, it didn’t come out too unseemly, so we’re fine)!
I gave them a bonus (fourth) set, just so Myla could have an excuse to wear a long dress. I was tempted to give her the “room full of balloons” that she’d been dreaming of, but had to nix the idea when I realized a lot of people had done that sort of thing already. So I proposed a sea of tealights instead of balloons. I was thinking of Julian Broad’s 2002 photograph of the Irish singer Enya in a room full of candles. I might have also been thinking of a similar scene from the music video of Mr. Big’s 1991 hit “Just Take My Heart.” Thankfully the couple was sold to the idea! It was an arduous task, trying to light over a hundred tealights—imagine the drops of sweat rolling down our foreheads—but it was so worth it in the end! The tealights lent an ethereal look to the pictures! Before we wrapped I asked for a few photos of them standing in front of El Puerto Rico’s main double doors—not so much because this structure reminded me of the door to curator Astrud Crisologo’s Casa Amarilla, but because I felt like the weathered wood and the cascading vines suited overall feel that the couple was gunning for.
Lance and Myla were such a delight to work with, not only because of their good looks (I swear, that line from a song that goes “that laugh that wrinkles your nose” might have been written for Myla) or their irresistible chemistry that made them very photographable, but mainly because of how they were very committed to turning this shoot into a memorable affair for the two of them (well, for all of us, actually). Always I tell my clients, “Don’t stress too much about this: it’s only your engagement photos, not your wedding day,” but this couple right here begged to differ, and approached the whole thing no differently than how they would approach the planning of the actual wedding! Their exchange of comments on Instagram and Facebook made it very clear that they took pleasure in every moment they spent deciding on each detail of the shoot. Myla, in particular, was quite hardcore: when I asked for the possibility of a sit-down meeting to discuss last-minute details, she wasted no time in booking plane tickets to Cebu, just like that! Also, I would credit Jennifer as the sole props master for this assignment, but that would be doing a great disservice to Myla, who sourced majority of the props that you see in these pictures (most of these items, including the mason jars and the mugs, she got from her favorite online store Paper Chic Studio). Lance actually mentioned in his first e-mail that these were just few of the qualities that he loved most about his fiancée: “She’s very full of ideas, and very creative—and she’s good at budgeting, too!”
They are set to tie the knot later this month (May 25), at the Our Mother of Perpetual Help Redemptorist Church in Dumaguete. The reception, of course, is going to be held at the El Puerto Rico. I’m sure the wedding photos are going to be as lovely as the engagement pictures, if not lovelier! It’s going be a magical day, I just know it! I can already picture Myla giggling endlessly. As for Lance…well, as he mentioned in the e-mail that he sent to us before we even met them, “Nothing makes me happier than seeing her happy.”
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This engagement session was featured in the April 24, 2013, edition of Manila-based online bridal inspiration magazine BridalBook.ph, making it my second time to be featured last month (after the surfer-/beach culture-themed engagement session that I did in Siargao late last year was showcased in April 10), and my third time overall. I am truly honored and extremely humbled that respected arbiters such as this Summit Media/Summit Digital title have taken notice of my (our) work, and so, to that end, I would like to take this opportunity to give massive, massive thanks to Kristy Ann Texon and the rest of the editorial team at BridalBook.ph—thank you so much, you guys, for your tireless support!
Lance Conrad Shan and Myla Belle Barandog | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon for Shutterfairy in Bais City and Majuyod, Negros Oriental, on March 2, 2013, and in Dumaguete City on March 3, 2013 | Main photographer: Malou Pages for Shutterfairy | Hair and makeup by Edrico Chua Palencia | Set decorators: Angelo Kangleon and Jennifer Hortillosa | Special thanks to Paper Chic Studio and Grace Sycip-Romano of Creative Concepts
Cowboy Kind of Love: Carl and RJ
The theme they chose was cowboy/ranch hand—Carl Bual, the groom-to-be, was a veterinary sales rep who’d grown up in Bukidnon surrounded by horses, and he wanted to relive that time in his life. And who was I to say no to an equine-related concept (those of you who’ve been following my blog will know I’ve become terribly obsessed with horses)? Aside from horses and stables and cowboy boots, I was also imagining throwing a big bad pickup truck into the mix. You see, I wanted a “gritty” feel, if you know what I mean. Something action-packed, and somewhat reckless, even. Especially after Carl made it very clear that “I don’t want anything cheesy—no hugging, no squeezing, no kissing.” This assertion took Malou Pages (of Shutterfairy Photography, where I am currently apprenticing), the main photographer, by surprise, and I think we almost choked on our macarons when Carl said this. By the look in Malou’s face, I could tell she was thinking, But what’s an engagement shoot without the hugging, the squeezing and the kissing? But, well, as the saying goes, “To each his own.” Besides, what else were you supposed to expect from a guy like Carl, what with his stocky frame, thundering baritone, and hands the size of a giant’s? (I swear, at one point I caught myself thinking, I better give this guy what he wants, lest I want to end up being sucker punched in the face!)
Conversely, the fiancée RJ Serafin (first cousin to my good friend Ace, Vice Mayor of Tabogon, Cebu—what a small world, right?) didn’t want the whole thing to be too mannish. For one, she didn’t want her outfits to be too western-inspired. Incredibly soft-spoken and ever the lady (she’s a preschool teacher, after all), she wanted a little girly touch, a little romance. I told her the cowboy boots were non-negotiable, and so were the cowboy hats, but promised I was gonna stay away from dirty jeans or anything plaid and/or gingham. At first I was tempted to slap a little Gigi Mortimer kicking back at her country cottage in Harrington, NY, against the mood board—i.e., romantic equestrian—but immediately I scratched that as soon as I realized that chunky sweaters and traditional knee-high riding boots would be too much for RJ’s slight frame (yes, she’s pint-sized, the polar opposite of Carl’s colossus). Thankfully, I was able to dig up a couple of floral dresses from The Fab Grab’s archives. I particularly fell in love with this ‘90s-style black floral prairie dress. It reminded me of what Cynthia Geary’s character Kellie wore some 35 minutes into the movie 8 Seconds, when she approached Luke Perry’s character as he was forking hay in a barn, and then she uttered the most beautiful lines: “Nothing you could say or do would make you less in my eyes. I love you. You don’t have to be perfect for me.” (It’s my favorite scene from that movie, especially since, after that, Perry’s character replied, “You may have to prove it. Right now, [when] I’m covered in horse shit,” and then they kissed, and Karla Bonoff’s “Standing Right Next to Me” started playing in the background, and then it was fade out, and fade in to the wedding scene.) For this reason alone I knew I just had to get this black dress into the picture, to add a little touch of 8 Seconds to my work! I didn’t want RJ’s wardrobe to be all dresses, though, so I took this one dress—the green floral one, which was a bit sheer—and asked her to wear it unbuttoned in the front, like as an open robe/maxi cardigan, over a little boy’s tank top and a pair of denim Daisy Dukes. I was taking a cue from the latest craze that had been sweeping the Lookbook.nu and Chictopia communities, which entailed, well, girls wearing their sheer maxi dresses (most of them from UNIF Clothing) unbuttoned in the front, as maxi cardigans. (Before this shoot I’d also adopted this style for one of the outfits that the model Fretzel Buenconsejo was going to wear for the Gracie Q catalog—click here and look for the series of photos where she’s frolicking with little children.) Add a Swarovski-encrusted seashell-colored stretch-jersey gala gown by Lotte Delima-Edwards to the mix, and we were on our way to being a far cry from the hackneyed cowgirl look that RJ wanted to avoid.
Funny thing happened on the day of the shoot. You know the macho Carl who’d said that hugging, squeezing and kissing in photos wasn’t his style? Well, that was still the same Carl who hopped into the van that was to take us to our location—he wouldn’t even laugh at the makeup artist’s jokes, he’d just chuckle and shake his head! When we arrived at our destination, though, as RJ was having her hair and makeup done, he was reckless enough to grab a bottle of Red Horse beer before seeking to get acquainted with, well, the actual horses that we were going to be using for the shoot. At first I was a little concerned about this, and about how RJ just sat there and encouraged this foolhardy behavior, but it would soon prove to work to our advantage: after a few bottles, Carl suddenly became so invigorated and cheerful—and he was suddenly OK with the idea of hugging and squeezing and kissing in front of the cameras! He’s gonna hate me for writing this down on here, but, hey, people are gonna see these photos, anyway, and are gonna wonder what happened to all the macho, so better put the whole backstory out there, right? I still got what I wanted, though, in the form of a badass pickup truck, which was “gritty” enough for me—I’m sorry, but there’s something about mud and dirt and off-road wheels (and mud and dirt on off-road wheels) that make me feel, um, alive (guess there’s still some macho in me, after all).
We were going to do this whole thing in Bukidnon—this would’ve been my first out-of-town shoot (well, save for the occasional sessions in Ormoc) and my first time to visit that part of the country (i.e., Mindanao). But we’d ran into some scheduling conflicts (November last year brought in an exceptional run of green lights—click here to read about our jampacked schedule that month), which had left us with no choice but to do it a little closer to home. Thank God Carl’s good friend Marlo Causin, a veterinarian, had a ranch (that also doubled as a fishing pond) that was only an hour and a half southwest of Cebu, in Barili. At first I was kind of in a funk about Bukidnon not happening, but when we arrived at the Causin property I immediately thanked the heavens that it didn’t—one, Marlo a champion host (I won’t enumerate all the stuff he made us eat that day); and two, I got to meet and photograph the most beautiful horse I’d ever seen in this part of the world!
Sabina, that’s how they named her. Probably because she looked like a sabino-white. I say “looked like” because she’s not a true sabino-white—if you look closely (e.g., at her muzzle), you will see her underlying skin is somewhat grayish. Of course, goes without saying that this did not make her less stunning. She was so towering and regal, she reminded me of the Andalusians I’d met at the Kentucky Horse Park in the summer of 2010. And unabashedly affectionate, too—she was always trying to plant a kiss on Carl’s cheek, like she wanted to steal the show from RJ and be the bride-to-be!—and was a darling in front of the cameras, like she’d grown up around show business! She was just a joy to photograph that I didn’t want the set that featured her to ever end! Malou kept saying, “OK, next outfit! Next set!” but a lot of times I had to pretend not not to hear her, ‘cause I just didn’t wanna let go of Sabina!
The Causins had two other horses in the property: Venus, Sabina’s daughter, and a strapping stallion named Bravo. We’d been told beforehand that we couldn’t borrow Venus for the sitting ‘cause she’d been in a foul mood lately, so she had to be kept at bay (and true enough, when I went to see her, she kind of threatened to buck!). We were supposed to use Bravo for one of the sets, but then just as his caretakers were readying him we noticed that he had a nasty cut in his right pastern, and so we had no choice but to let him sit this one out. Shame, because he was a beauty, too, what with his shiny chestnut coat and all! But I’ll be back for you one day, Bravo (I hope)!
I love it when the theme is country or cowboy. And not just for the obvious reason that it allows me to be around and/or photograph horses, but also because it’s the kind of theme where my subjects can have a crazy good time and be spontaneous, you know? Like, they’re kind of in character, but at the same time they can just be themselves. No contrived poses or positions, no fidgeting because the outfits make them uncomfortable, no trying hard to borrow, say, Kristine Hermosa’s smile (swear to God, I can’t wait to see the day I’ll hear the last of couples wanting to “copy” the Kristine-Oyo engagement photos!). I guess this is the exact same reason why I love the grunge theme, too. It’s, like, there’s a theme, but it’s not there, you know? It stylizes your subjects, but doesn’t disguise them.
On our drive back to the city after the shoot had wrapped, Carl and RJ were discussing song choice—i.e., what song to incorporate in the slideshow of their engagement photos (to be played during the wedding reception). Although between the two of them they shared a couple of love songs that meant a lot to them, this time they wanted something from the country genre, in keeping with the theme. I was quick to dispense advice on the matter, just ‘cause two of the most beautiful love songs I’d ever heard in my life happened to be from that genre: the aforementioned “Standing Right Next to Me” by Karla Bonoff, from 8 Seconds (perfect, in fact, because didn’t they play it in the movie’s wedding scene?), and “I Cross My Heart” by George Strait. They’d never heard of these songs before, and I didn’t have my iPod handy, so I recited to them a couple of lines from both. Needless to say, they loved them, and Carl was quick to declare that, of the two, he liked the George Strait more. I don’t know if they ended up using either, but I sure hope they did.
Carlos Bual and Rachelle Jean Serafin | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon for Shutterfairy in Barili, Cebu, on November 20, 2011 | Main photographers: Malou Pages-Solomon for Shutterfairy, Charisse Darlene Calo and Paul Armand Calo for Calography (click here to view some of Malou’s photos) | Hair and makeup by JingJing F. Maching | Amaranth pink floral-print cotton-blend dress with cap sleeves, black floral-print button-front prairie dress, and hunter green floral-print button-front stretch-silk shirtdress (worn as maxi cardigan), all from The Fab Grab | White tank top, Forever 21 | Swarovski-encrusted seashell stretch-jersey gala gown, Lotte Delima-Edwards | Accessories, Gracie Q
