This Girl is On Fire: Martina San Diego
Couple of outtake shots of singer-songwriter Martina San Diego from her debut album cover shoot. I didn’t include these photos in the final lineup that I presented to the record label because, as you can see, they didn’t exactly fit the agreed upon theme of “girl going on a rural road trip to retrace her roots.” This whole thing was something that we squeezed into the agenda at literally the very last minute. For so long I’d been wanting to do a shoot that involved fire eaters, and thankfully Martina was down for it. (Her producer Cattski Espina was baffled, though: “Seriously, what is it with you and fire?” she asked jokingly, referencing another album cover shoot that I’d done for the trip-hop collective Womb back in September of last year, in which I’d asked to photograph the band members standing against a fiercely burning flame.)
Never thought I’d let these photos see the light of day, but then I was looking at them this morning, and it got me to thinking that, hey, didn’t these pictures make perfect sense now? Weren’t they like a sign of the times of sorts? Wasn’t Martina like a hot commodity now—hopping from one live show to another, getting some serious airplay on local radio (i.e., her interpretation of the Kyle Wong-penned Cebuano-language ballad “Balay ni Mayang” that placed third in the recently concluded VISPOP: The Visayan Pop Songwriting Competition)? Wasn’t she becoming the focus of a substantial cult following? Wasn’t she being stopped on the streets by complete strangers who tell her, “You’re awesome!” I mean, think about it for a second: don’t all those add up to “This Girl is on Fire” written all over her?
Massive thanks, by the way, to Martina’s cousin Andre for agreeing to be part of these pictures and for lending us his amazing fire eating skills. Gotta give mad props to that boy: he had the patience of a saint (he had to endure multiple takes, but never once complained) yet he could eat fire like a…I should not finish that statement, but you get my drift. It’s incredible how showmanship runs in that family like water in a river—it’s, like, to them, putting on a good show is the most satisfying job in the world.
Speaking of putting on a good show, trust Martina to do just that when she releases her debut album Blank Walls tonight. Yes, it’s finally here—and her Cebuano fans will finally have a taste of all that she’s worked hard for these past few months! Today is her last day in the Philippines, too—she’s leaving back for the States tomorrow to prepare for college in the fall—but that’s alright, because she’s not leaving without a bang!
If you guys are in town, and you want to show Martina some love, it’s at Harold’s Hotel down Gorordo and Rosal, and the show starts at 830PM. Oh, and with special guest performances by the Wonggoys, Undercover Grasshoppers, Ella Melendez, and Mary Anchit. I’ll see guys there! It’s going to be epic!
Martina San Diego | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon in Lapu-Lapu City on February 3, 2013 | Hair and makeup by Justine Gloria | Sittings assistant: April Ordesta | Special thanks to Cattski Espina, Andre San Diego, and Marla Baguio
The Girl Who Fell to Earth: Martina San Diego
When Martina San Diego, towards the tail end of summer of last year, decided to pack her bags and leave her adoptive hometown of Lorton, VA, so she could spend a year in the Philippines, she thought she was going to be turning her back on music for a while. For one, she was going to be leaving behind Ivy Rose, the all-girl alternative rock band of which she was frontwoman, who were at the height of forging their craft and who were just beginning to make waves in the NoVa/D.C. music scenes, after having released two full-length studio albums, opened for some of the biggest names in alternative rock/power pop (Ben Folds and Weezer, to name a few), and appeared in television shows (most notably season 7 of NBC’s America’s Got Talent). She was going to be putting college on hold, too—she’d just finished high school, and had been all set to go to NYU to begin pursuing a degree in Music Education (emphasis on Vocal Performance), but she decided to push that back to the next fall. Not that this sudden detour put her into a funk—after all, it was her own decision, not anyone else’s, to leave, to take a break. “I decided [it would be good for me] to take a year off and spend that time in Cebu,” she now shares. “I’ve vacationed here countless times growing up… [but this time I wanted] to get in touch with my [Filipino/Cebuano] roots.” How she arrived at this decision, no one could tell. Did she just wake up one morning and realize it was about time she did that? Perhaps she felt like, being 18 going on 19, this was a necessary part of growing up? Was this a sort of unspoken rite of passage, if you will, among American-born Filipinos? Well, whatever her reasons, the plane tickets had been booked, and she was not letting anything stop her—not even anything that had to do with music, which, next to family, had become the center of her life. She did remember to pack her beloved Breedlove guitar, though, to quell any anticipated separation anxiety.
Little did she know then that this self-imposed hiatus from music was going to metamorphose into one of the most radical turning points in her musical evolution.
When local music stalwart Cattski Espina (more commonly known by her mononym Cattski) found out that Martina was in Cebu, and that this time she was going to be staying longer than the usual couple of weeks, she wasted no time getting ahold of the girl. Cattski had just released her fourth album (her first as a solo artist; fifth, if you count her tenth anniversary compilation album released in 2010) and was done with majority of its promotion; she was also happy with how, in just four years, her “ghost vanity record label” 22 Tango Records had grown into a platform to share with other local music talents, and how this expansion, so to speak, had enabled her to take on a consulting/mentoring role to guide these people in the marketing and distribution of their work. Now she was ready to move further down renaissance woman territory by adding producer to her already extensive resume—something which, for all intents and purposes, she’d actually already dipped her toes in back in 2010 when she assumed this role for the band Wonggoys’ debut album, and now wanted to do more of. “I first met her at a Wonggoys gig some three years ago—she’s friends with the boys, you see,” says Cattski of her first encounter with Martina. “I didn’t pay any real attention to her at the time; I thought she was just another nice kid who could play the guitar and do decent covers.” (Apparently, in Cattski’s world, she bumps into those kinds of kids everyday, and so she has to be extra cautious.) “She left back for the States shortly after that, but then we started following each other on social media, and that was when I found out that she was in a band [Ivy Rose], and that they had some pretty good original material!” And so as soon as she found out that Martina was back in town, she thought, Why not give her a shot? The timing was perfect because she was looking for someone to open for the Wonggoys’ pre-hiatus gig December of last year (yes, it was their turn to leave for the States), and Martina seemed like the natural choice because she was close personal friends with the band. “I asked her to play for the [Wonggoys'] ‘send-off’ event, and she was down for it. I assembled a [backing] band for her for the occasion. I was impressed with her showmanship, but, more than that, I was blown away by her attitude and her [work ethic], so I thought, Hey, I should check out her original stuff—I was curious if she had some material outside the work she’d done with her band.” Turned out that the girl did have some material that she’d written sans Ivy Rose. In no time a demo was sent, and that was when Cattski knew she had found the artist she wanted to produce next: “It was good! It was good and honest. It was not pretentious—at all! It was exactly what I’d been looking for. So I started to talk to her about the possibility of [me] producing [her solo debut] album. And that was it. That was the start of our working relationship.”
To say that Martina wasn’t prepared for all this is sort of an understatement. Sure, she was a little floored by how fast it all happened, and by the enormity of it all, especially the part where it was someone whom she’d greatly admired that put the offer on the table: “I had heard of Cattski before, and knew she was a well-known Cebuana singer/songwriter,” Martina recounts, “so when she talked to me about releasing a solo album under [her label], in no way could I pass up the opportunity! Cattski is a well-respected musician, not only in Cebu, but in Manila, as well, and [some of us abroad have great respect for her, too], so it was really humbling—and exciting!—when I was given this chance to work with her!” But, again, not to say she wasn’t prepared for this, because the truth is, at the time she was asked to submit a demo, she was already ready with a couple of songs—two that she’d written prior to leaving NoVa/D.C., and some she’d been working on since she arrived in Cebu. Funny thing, because she’d thought that her coming to Cebu would make her forgo music-making for a while, but then all that she had come here to do—revisit her heritage, reacquaint herself with the place where her parents had been born, soak up the wisdom of elders and long-lost extended family members—only fueled her desire to write new songs, and her determination to rediscover herself as an artist. “My experiences [and interactions] here in Cebu have inspired me a lot,” she shares. “Like I mentioned, as a child, I’ve been here several times for short visits, but that is completely different from actually living and working here. My eyes have been opened to so many different [aspects of the] Cebuano culture by visiting places like Carcar—where my ancestors are from—and Oslob, Badian, Tabuelan. I’ve also been to some places outside Cebu, like Tacloban in Leyte, where some of my family are from, too. I was especially inspired by the rich family history that I have in Carcar and over in Tacloban.” Perhaps not by and large, but she also credits her exposure to her San Diego pedigree’s cultural inclinations, artistic tendencies, and unwavering religious devotion—yes, she belongs to the family that founded the San Diego Dance Company, a group that has become a sort of institution in these parts by virtue of their award-winning performances during Sinulog festivals over the years—as a catalyst in her awakening to her new musical direction. All that, combined with her forging ties in the Cebuano music scene, gave her the much-needed push for her to graduate from frontwoman mode to legitimate singer-songwriter. So it was a good thing, then, that she had not forgotten to bring her trusty old guitar with her on this trip!
And so they got down to business, with Martina writing and composing more new material, and taking all her existing material, reswizzling them, and funneling them into her new direction; and with Cattski acting as second pair of ears, providing critique here and there, helping out with the arrangements. It turned out to be a feisty, powerful partnership, one that, once it got moving, was hard to stop, and thus achieved astounding results in no time. At the time of our initial meeting to discuss the album cover shoot, only four or so weeks had passed since they’d first discussed the project and signed the contracts, but already they’d covered some pretty serious ground in terms of pre-production, and were getting ready to ease into the first phase of the recording process. When I commented on how this seemed to be a record time for her (well, for 22 Tango Records in general), Cattski declared that it was all because of Martina’s commitment, and her “mature way” of approaching the whole project. “The first question I asked Martina was: ‘Do you want to be a pop star, or a musician?’ To which she chose the latter—and I appreciated that because, as you know, I would not know how to make pop stars.” And Martina proved this by displaying a deeply ingrained sense of professionalism, by being receptive to feedback, and by striking while the iron is hot. It was all these qualities—and many more—that made her very easy to work with, paving the way to a faster, very prolific collaboration.
And all these were evident, too, in the way that she approached the preparations for our shoot, and the actual shoot itself. Loved that she had a steadfast creative vision for herself, making it easy for me to pick up ideas of what the resulting photos should say about her as an artist. For one, she expressed that she didn’t want them to look too packaged for marketing—that wasn’t what her music was about, she said, and so she didn’t want her photos to go down that route, too. Nothing too high-wattage and glamorous, but nothing too quirky, either. She wanted something down-to-earth, something natural. She also wanted them to reflect the fact that most of the songs in this album were inspired by her retracing her roots—or, more accurately, by her rediscovering herself as she was retracing her roots. I suggested a “rural road trip” kind of theme, perfect because it met all the abovementioned requirements, and she fell in love with the idea. But as resolute she was when it came to the overall look and feel of the photos, she pretty much gave me the free hand when it came to the styling part. I expressed that, just because she wanted “down-to-earth and natural” did not mean we had to settle for the basic T-shirt-and-jeans thing all the way, and she agreed. And so I proceeded to assemble a couple of outfits in the style of boho-folk—earthly enough to make her look like she keeps her feet on the ground, yet whimsical enough to make her look like she sometimes goes to sleep to dream, too. I was thinking of a young Joni Mitchell as I was putting some of these clothes together: the white bell-sleeved lace tunic, the black floral babydoll cinched at the waist with a belt—these were inspired by clothes that Mitchell wore in a series of black-and-white portraits taken by American photographer Jack Robinson, Jr., in the fall of ’68, following the release of her debut album. I was also inspired by a young Joan Baez: the Peter Pan-collar lace top (by Kristina Monsanto for Stitch in the City) that I made her wear for the scenes inside the Mancao ancestral house in Carcar (i.e., with the old piano) is obviously not boho-folk, but I wanted to reference the black-and-white Peter Pan-collar dress that Baez could be seen wearing in a circa 1964 David Redfern photograph of her performing in Edinburgh, Scotland. If she were to have it her way, of course, Martina would prefer she be shot in her “daily uniform” of a T-shirt and denim shorts, but she appreciated these references, and so she welcomed my ideas. “[Besides,] what’s a photo shoot without us getting to wear clothes that we don’t normally wear in real life, right?” she said of two or three of the more ornate pieces that I picked out during her personal shopping session with me. She would later on, however, find herself infusing those very pieces into her everyday wardrobe after our shoot, mixing and matching them with her basics (I don’t mean to blow my horn, but that right there is the measure of effective styling, is it not?)!
I make it sound very easy, but the truth is it was a bit of a challenge trying to come up with these looks. I knew that she wanted to keep things simple, but at the same time I had to be sensitive to the fact that this was a young artist who was looking to carve her own niche—there was no way I could afford to fall into the trap of making her look like everyone else! I had to make sure she was going to stand out from her contemporaries, pretty much like how her music was expected to. Even Cattski, as they got deep into the recording process, found this aspect a bit of a toughie: “It entailed a whole lot of experimentation and research,” she shares. “Martina’s core style was very distinct, no doubt about that, but I took it up as a challenge to find ways to make it stand out even more. It was very acoustic guitar-driven, you see, so my job was to look for other elements to throw into the mix, just to make sure it wasn’t going to end up in the acoustic genre catch-all.” Just like that, the atmosphere at 22 Tango and at the studios took a turn for the—pardon my language now— “shit just got real,” and everyone was required to be focused like the Terminator.
And with good reason, because Martina worked so hard for this, and so she definitely didn’t deserve to be boxed in with the MYMPs of the world. Although at first glance she might seem like one, especially when she’s playing covers of popular songs for you at the bars, just listen to her original songs and you will find she is no boilerplate acoustic act. To give you an idea of what this new sound of hers is gonna sound like, I asked her to describe it herself: “My new sound still stays true to the alternative rock that heavily influenced my music growing up, but this time I’ve infused it with some indie folk elements here and there. I guess the easiest way to describe it to a layman is this way: it’s a kind of like a mix of The Cranberries, The Cure, Feist, and The Weepies.” She broke it down further by shining a light on how much it was going to be different from her previous/old sound (i.e., with Ivy Rose): “The instrumentation of my new sound is softer than that of my band’s. For one, it’s focused more on acoustic guitar sounds versus, say, distorted guitar effects and all that.” But, to Cattski’s point, they didn’t leave it at spare acoustic guitars—there’s a great deal of inventive layering, too: “We tried incorporating a bunch of new stuff—like for this one song, instead of using bongos for percussion, we had the drummer tap on the back of a guitar!” So to sum it all up: it was like taking two influences, one old and one new, and putting them together; stripping out all the hardcore, rock-just-like-the-boys twangs so all that remained was a certain solemnity; and then adding unexpected overlays to give it a rough-hewn touch. All of which added up to a sound that was uniquely her own.
And that’s not even talking about her voice and her songwriting yet. Human nature being what it is, as I was preparing for this shoot, I didn’t even bother to ask for demos of her new songs, and I just allowed myself to be gravitated towards her Ivy Rose songs (I was more curious about what it was about their sound that made them a hit in the States, when I should’ve been more interested in how she was gonna be charting her new musical path). So imagine my surprise when, as I was photographing her in the grounds of the Mancao ancestral house (day one of our shoot), she opened her mouth to serenade me with “Stars,” one of the songs that she’d just finished writing for the new album. Accompanied only by a spare guitar, her vocals really stood out, and you could hear it was going places that it had never been to during her time with Ivy Rose. My heart ballooned at her vocal stylings, particularly her clever cadences, the way she could swoop from a sweet, subdued hum to an open-throated (yet not earsplitting) semi-wail and back again in a single legato line, and the exquisite display of texture. I loved how all this made her singing sound carefree and impulsive, and yet you seemed to know that these were techniques that only someone with a masterful control over their voice could pull off. Pair all that with a lush, soulful soprano, and you’ve got something that complements her tender, wistful songwriting style perfectly. “All of the songs [in this upcoming album] I wrote by myself,” she would later share. She thought about collaborating with others on a few songs, but then decided she could put that off for later on in her career, or for side projects—right now, as far as she was concerned, the only songwriter who understood the kind of storytelling style that would best suit her voice was herself. She played another song for me—“Crystal Clear,” a somewhat plaintive piece on coming to terms with “the the fact that you can’t always be perfect,” and which later on turns into a paean for her younger siblings—and I was so thrown that I had to stop taking pictures. It was that arresting. I remember wanting to turn to Cattski to ask, “Is this indie folk? Is this neofolk? What is this?” but stopping myself before I could. Because, really, who cared what it was? It was as good as music gets.
It strikes me to note that, even when she hasn’t released her album yet, or offered a sneak peek—save for maybe one live performance of “Stars,” which she did at a VMobile event last May 1st—Martina is already finding a following among local music fans. Couple of my friends who are event organizers and club owners have been raving about her voice, and her ability to take familiar tunes (well, not-too-familiar tunes, because Martina tastefully chooses her covers, sidestepping the conventional and opting for the likes of Modern English, Bon Iver, The Cranberries) and make them her own. Of late, her reputation as a versatile and fearless interpreter of songs has been further cemented by her lending her vocals to “Balay in Mayang,” a Cebuano-language singsongy ballad written by Kyle Wong (of the Wonggoys) and his girlfriend Marianne Dungog, submitted as official entry to the first installment of VISPOP: The Visayan Pop Songwriting Competition held last May 18 at the Benedicto College Artists’ Hall—Martina’s interpretation of the song helped make it land third place! As of this writing, only three weeks since its digital release, the combined clicks (on SoundCloud and Youtube) for the song have shot past the 15,000 mark, and a number of people—ranging from industry insiders (like former Cebu Guitar Society president Joel Oporto) to common listeners—have taken to social media sites to sing their praises and encourage others to check the song out. Funnily enough, there’s even a marriage proposal out there (“MARRY ME, MARTINA!”), but who can blame the guy? There’s no denying that, apart from being very talented, the girl is also blessed with good looks—as I was photographing her there were times I thought it was Kristin Kreuk in front of my camera, to which she just said, “I get that a lot!” (Of course, she said this in an aw-shucks kind of way—if anything, Martina is the kind who cares about looks last: “Being called a ‘simple beauty’ is, in my book, way more flattering than being called ‘hot.’”) It helps, too, that she has that kind of decorum that makes her very approachable, even to children on the street (whom she has a soft spot for)—she learns her Cebuano from them, they learn their English from her. She was reaching out to people, and so people were reaching out to her.
Yes, it’s amazing to see the kind of buzz she’s generated, even when she hasn’t released any of her original songs yet—how much more when and after she does? Well, it won’t be very long now, since her album is scheduled to drop this coming June 15 (launch event to be held at Harolds, down Gorordo and Rosal)! Yes, her fans will finally have a taste of the new Martina—the real Martina—and I’m excited to see how all that’s gonna pan out! Cattski and her team at 22 Tango are even more excited—these past few days they’ve been having it up to the eyeballs with the grind, but that’s alright, because they know it’s all going to be worth it in the end: “We’re excited for Marti, we’re excited for the team, we’re excited for the crew,” Cattski enthuses, “but, most of all, we’re excited for her fans, especially her Cebuano fans, because this new sound of hers…it’s unlike anything they’ve ever heard before! And it’s easy to listen to! Very easy!”
What is not going to be easy, though—even for Martina herself—is to try to stomach the fact that the night of her album launch is going to be her last night in Cebu. I know, and I’m sorry that you have to hear it from me first, but, yes, she is set to leave back for the States the following morning! “So many emotions at this point,” she shares. “I can’t fathom what it’ll be like when I board that plane! My heart has two homes now, which is why it’s going to be so hard for me to leave Cebu; but at the same time I am beyond excited to be reunited with my parents and my siblings back in Virginia!” To her it’s like a push and pull kind of situation now, except they’re not collateral because one force is greater than the other. It’s not just her family waiting for her back in the States, you see—the college plans that she put on hold in order to come here is now a-calling. She’s already accomplished what she came here to do, and, by some incredible stroke of luck, she’s also fulfilled a lifelong dream—to find her own voice, and to release a solo album. And so now it’s time to pursue another dream: “I’m so excited to [start pursuing] a degree in Music Education—on a scholarship!—at NYU this fall [semester]. It’s a four-year undergraduate program under the university’s Steindhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, with a Vocal Performance emphasis.” Asked why she still feels the need to go to school for something that she’s clearly already very good at, she reasons that she no longer wants it to be all about her now, and that she envisions a future of her helping other aspiring artists/musicians: “I hope to open up my own school of music one day.”
It’s the most awkward of times to leave, and Martina is aware of this—it’s almost like, wait, we’ve just warmed up to her, and now she’s leaving? She consider this subject a rather touchy one, and in fact starts to beg off talking about it, but I tell her she’s going to have to, if only to assure her fans that she won’t be gone for long, or, worse, for good. “Unfortunately, right now, I’m not sure when I’ll be able to come back,” she says. “I know that once I start college it’s going to be difficult to take long breaks.” She begs of her Cebuano fans to not worry, though, as she is bound to find creative ways to reach out to them, even when she’s 8,000 miles away. “In this day and age, social media and the internet in general have made it possible for musicians to promote their work to a once-impossible global audience,” she declares. “That being said, I’m definitely planning to promote my new album in Cebu through those means—pretty much like how, the whole time I’ve been here, my friends in the States have been kept up-to-date on the album’s progress and all. Right now the folks at 22 Tango and I are in talks about digitally distributing the album via iTunes and Amazon, to make sure the CD and the songs are going to be available to everyone, everywhere!” And although she doesn’t know when she’s gonna be back for sure, she promises that she will definitely be back: “Once a year, maybe, if my academics and financial situation will allow it,” she smiles optimistically, adding that Cebu is very worth coming back to. “I think that Cebu has a great music scene. There are so many talented musicians here, and in all different types of genres. What I like most about the scene here as opposed to the ones back in the States is that it really is like a ‘music community’ here, you know?—there is a strong sense of collaboration between artists! And that’s actually one of the things I’m looking forward to now—whereas this first album that’s about to come out is all me, hopefully the next one will contain a healthy dose of me collaborating with other people, especially Cebuano musicians that I have come to admire!” Of course, she’s not about to discount the fact that, more than being able to come up with an album, her Cebuano fan base is the greatest thing that’s happened to her in the last couple of months: “You guys are my inspiration, and, wherever I am in the world, I hope to continue making music you all can be proud of.”
Martina San Diego | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon in Cebu City, Carcar, and Oslob, on January 27, 2013, and in Lapu-Lapu City on February 3, 2013 | Hair and makeup by Justine Gloria | Sittings assistant: April Ordesta | Special thanks to Cattski Espina, Andre San Diego, and Marla Baguio | Cosmic latte Peter Pan collar lace top, Stitch in the City; French rose/carnation/mantis/white chintz print top, Bossini; Redwood maxi skirt, Cotton On
Your Sweetness is My Weakness: Paul John and Rhia
If you’ve been following this little blog of mine for a while now, the name Rhia de Pablo is gonna ring a bell. She’s my baker friend whom I commission to make custom cupcakes whenever a photo shoot’s concept calls for them—for example, and most recently, I had her whip up a bunch of red, white and blue cupcakes with seafarer details (fondant toppings in the shape of helms, anchors, sailboats, kisby rings, and even crabs) for one of my nautical-themed engagement shoots last year. (She is also my go-to girl whenever there’s a birthday in the family and I need birthday cupcakes or a birthday cake, or when New Year’s is fast approaching and I need a good old-fashioned homemade apple pie.) So when it was her turn to get engaged (to her boyfriend of four years) and to think of a theme for her own engagement photos, it was only natural that she would gravitate towards one that involved cupcakes or baking in general. And how could one say no to that, right? The idea of a shoot that was going to give me the license to gobble half the cupcakes that she knew how to make proved far too delicious for me to turn down!
At first she was sold to the idea of a picnic for two kind of setting, with the picnic basket and blanket filled to the brim with a hundred cupcakes of different shapes and sizes. I could picture it in my mind’s eye, and it was whimsical, alright, and I would’ve loved to give this to her, had the picnic thing been something I hadn’t already overdone. So I proposed a kitchen setting, since that was something I’d always been dying to do—well, I’d already done the kitchen thing when I photographed stylish young pâtissier Gayle Urgello for the catalog of Shandar Shoes’ premier collection some two years back, and again last year when I photographed a young family making Devil’s Food cupcakes in their charming Brooklyn home, but I’d never before done it for a love/engagement shoot. Rhia was adamant about doing an outdoor thing, though, ‘cause she wanted the photos to have a “fanciful touch” to them—she felt that indoor photos would be too formal. She had a valid point there. So what we did was meet halfway by deciding to put up an outdoor kitchen!
Rhia had an additional request: she expressed she also wanted the photos (or some of them) to toy with one of her favorite love quotes that go, “Once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale” (author unknown). How to squeeze this into a bigger picture that involved cupcakes/baking? I could not think of a more effective and more ingenious way to do this other than by way of a “Hansel and Gretel”-inspired setup, complete with a life-size gingerbread house and all (minus the witch part, of course)!
Quite a challenge to assemble the outdoor kitchen that I almost regretted suggesting it in the first place! Aside from the “fanciful touch” that she envisioned, you see, Rhia had other requirements: she wanted parts of it to be in keeping with the color scheme that she had chosen for the wedding—citrusy colors of orange, lemon yellow, lime green, and grapefruit pink—and she wanted a ‘50s kind of feel, since that was her favorite era. The former was piece of cake, really—I only had to throw in some yellow flowers, a couple of dish cloths in orange and yellow and green stripes, and I only had to ask her to make cupcakes in those colors. It was the ‘50s bit that proved to be tricky. Not that it was hard to find vintage or vintage-looking cooking utensils or bakeware, because between my own kitchen and hers (and her family’s kitchen in Samar) we had a decent amount of stuff that we could pile together. The real backbreaker came in the form of this 250+ lb., 8 feet tall cupboard dating back to the late ‘50s/early ‘60s—imagine having to lug that thing down two flights of stairs, and having to transport it three miles, from my apartment in Guadalupe to our shooting location in Camp Marina up the Lahug hills! We had to hire three moving guys and a moving truck to help us tackle that monster! Funny thing ‘cause when we got to Camp Marina there were other photo shoots under way, and the other photographers couldn’t resist approaching Rhia and asking, “Wow, you brought your whole kitchen with you for your engagement photos?” Yes, the sight of us lifting a bulky cupboard (plus an oven and a kitchen table) was enough to interrupt their deadly serious proceedings. I couldn’t blame them. I mean, sometimes I myself am shocked by my own bravura—but, hey, you have to take bold risks if you want to paint a pretty picture, right? Right. Please nod so I won’t feel too bad!
Because putting together the outdoor kitchen scene was already too much for one personal to handle, I had to ask another set decorator, Jenny Hortillosa, to take care of the improvised gingerbread house for the “Hansel and Gretel”-inspired scenes. I say improvised because, right from the start, we seemed to know that it would be expensive to make a real gingerbread house in the size that Rhia wanted, not to mention that would require the skills of a professional confectioner. At first we were scared that the whole thing would come out too artificial, but Jenny’s idea of using graham crackers stacked together like bricks actually worked—if you squinted a little bit it all looked legit! She even used colorful marshmallows for the trimmings! It kind of made me feel bad that we were being wasteful, though—I mean, imagine how many s’mores you can make with over a hundred crackers and fifty marshmallows—but I knew I had to give in to Rhia’s request of a fairy tale touch, otherwise it would all turn out to be nothing but your ordinary engagement photos!
Loved the dress that I had her wear for the outdoor kitchen and “Hansen and Gretel”-inspired sets. FYI, I had that dress made especially for this shoot! After three or so days of scouring the thrift shops for dresses that had a ‘50s housewife kind of silhouette and having no luck at it, I decided to just have one made. So happy that I was able to find (with the help of my designer friend Peewee Senining) a fabric pattern that had all of Rhia’s favorite citrusy colors! From that same cloth I asked the seamstress to make a matching bowtie for Rhia’s fiance PJ (I was upset at first because she made one that was a tad too oversize, but then PJ put it on and it actually worked for the pictures because it only added a campy touch—and isn’t campy a characteristic of most ‘50s musicals?).
I wanted to expand on the ‘50s theme, so I decided to give them a bonus set in the form of a couple of ‘50s diner-inspired scenes. Couple of weeks before this shoot, you see, I’d stumbled upon the local launch event of Archie’s Girls, MAC Cosmetics’ new collection inspired by the main characters of the Betty and Veronica comic book series, and they’d had these dancers wearing red-and-white ‘50s-inspired ensembles swinging to rockabilly. Immediately I’d called the seamstress so she could begin throwing together a red-and-white polka dot halterneck dress for Rhia! We’d made arrangements to shoot at Sam’s ’50s Diner over at North Reclamation (near Cebu Doctors’ University), but when we got there they were closed (the owners had had to go on a business trip, the security officers told us), and so we were left with no choice but to take just a few photos by the diner’s entrance, and then carry out the key scenes at another ‘50s-themed restaurant called District 50 (at the J Centre Mall in Mandaue). This unanticipated change in location offered up some minor setbacks: (1) the limited floor space at District 50 left us with very little room to move around, and (2) we were not allowed to use the electrical outlets, making it impossible for the hairstylist to give Rhia the Beehive hairstyle that we’d been visualizing in our minds since the start. But, well, you’ve got to work with what you’ve got, right? It was better than having to move the shoot to another day! Thanks to the management of District 50 for accommodating us at the last minute! Food was great, too—their burgers and strawberry floats were to die for!
But, of course, the real treat came in the form of Rhia’s cupcakes! Swear to God, I usually don’t hurry through my shoots, and everyone I’ve ever worked with can attest that I like to take my sweet time, but for this one right here I could not wait to finish the job just so I could let go of the camera and attack the cupcake pan! Yes, I can be a douche sometimes!
Thank you so much, Rhia and PJ, for allowing me (and my interns!) to take these pictures that will serve as a prelude to your happy ever after! I hope that you (and your guests at the wedding) will enjoy them! And thanks to Rhia’s friends (I’m sorry I can’t mention each an everyone of you on here—there’s too many of you!—but you guys know who you are) for being such darlings and for helping us during the shoot! Here’s hoping Rhia will have more cupcakes for us when she gets back from the wedding!
Paul John “PJ” N. Aleria and Rhia de Pablo | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon in Mandaue, Cebu, on April 20, 2013, and in Cebu City, Cebu, on April 21, 2013 | Hair and makeup by Michael Sotillo | Set decorators: Angelo Kangleon and Jennifer Hortillosa | Special thanks to: Dianne Acebedo, Marla Baguio, Andrew Lisen, Kristal Pinili, Arrah Quistadio, Monique Rosal, Marnelli Uyguangco, and Martin Yutiu
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
The Couchella Effect: Monique
Couple of photos from the super fun personal style portrait session that I did for my friend Monique Rosal a few weeks ago. This wasn’t my first time to photograph this girl. I’d shot her some two years ago, at a time when I had had very little experience, and thus had had very little technical know-how (i.e., white balance and ISO settings and all that other good stuff had baffled me), not to mention I’d had to share the job with a bunch of other photographers and so I couldn’t exercise full creative control when it came to the locations, etc. Guess it goes without saying that the resulting photos from that shoot had turned out really bad—well, maybe not that bad, but definitely something I couldn’t be proud of—and so I’d promised her I’d take her pictures again. Which brought us to this session right here. I think it’s important to be ready to extend your subjects the courtesy of reshooting, especially when you yourself are not happy with your shots—you might argue that you’d rather wait for them to tell you they’re not satisfied with your work, but the truth is not a lot of people are going find it easy to do that, so, essentially, you’re just gonna have to be honest with yourself. Trust me, it’ll only do you good—so long, of course, as you stay sensitive to your shooting schedule and other appointments. Monique here had had to wait almost two years for an opening in my schedule, but that was alright, because what mattered was we got around to doing it!
This whole thing came at a perfect time, too, because she was starting to be obsessed with Tumblr, and she wanted to be able to post original photos and to keep the “reblogging” to a minimum. (I might also convince her to go on Lookbook.nu—Monique, remind me to send you an invite, OK?) The idea was to photograph her in her own clothes, or in clothes that reflected her personality, because we didn’t want to make the same mistake we’d made the last time wherein we’d made her raid her friends’—and even her mom’s—closets. My first impulse was to ask her to wear surfer chick-inspired clothes and then drag her off to a beach setting, if only to satisfy my own Tumblr obsession (the Billabong Girls USA Tumblr site is one of the very few sites that I follow), but then I realized that dictating her would defeat the purpose of a personal style shoot. Besides, she confessed that, although she did like the beach, she really was more of a rocker chick. For days we’d been talking about Coachella, the music festival held every spring in Southern California, how it had been a mutual dream of ours to attend it one day (and how I had been foolish for being in L.A. last year and turning down invites to weekend two), and that was how we arrived at an idea: why not have her show up at the shoot in clothes that she could see herself wearing to the desert music fest if she were given the chance to make that scene one day? I’m looking at these photos now and laughing at the fact that this “DIY Coachella” thing has since been given a name—“Couchella,” which is basically the act of “sitting on your couch and dreaming you were at Coachella”—but we had so much fun that afternoon! And I loved the clothes she was able to round up for the session, especially the vintage babydoll dress in eggshell lace—very Free People-y! Delighted me to no end, too, that she chose to wear everything with her brand spanking new 1490 10-eye Doc Martens—I always love it when there’s a little grunge or ‘90s involved.
Speaking of grunge/’90s, the Smashing Pumpkins T-shirts that you see her wearing here are actually mine (yes, I collect Smashing Pumpkins T-shirts, and I consider them a prized collection—some of these shirts I got when I first saw the band live at the Louisville Palace for the third leg of their summer 2008 tour). It was kind of spur-of-the-moment, really—in the middle of our shoot I remembered that she loved the Pumpkins to death (last year she and a couple of friends literally braved a storm by flying to Manila to see Billy et al. at the Araneta Coliseum despite the torrential rains and floods), and so I was quick to snatch a couple of T-shirts from my closet so I could take photos of her in them. Of course, as you can see here, they look a hundred times better on her than they do on me, but that doesn’t mean I’m letting her keep them!
She wanted me to take a few photos of the new tattoo between her shoulder blades (of three cassette tapes with their media spewed out to form a G-clef, a not-so-subtle declaration of her love for music), and that’s how things took a turn for the, um, boudoir. I’d never done a boudoir session before in my life—perhaps the closest I’d gotten to doing one was when I’d photographed Womb frontwoman Chai Fonacier’s naked back during their album cover shoot (also to pinpoint a back tattoo)—but, hey, anything’s worth trying, right? Thank God the girl was ready with really cute undergarments! I had to be real careful with my approach, though, by thinking less FHM and more Agent Provocateur catalog—this way I was assured the photos were gonna come out sassy, not sleazy. Sure enough, they turned out really nice, but I can only post a few on here—I’m sorry, but I still have a little bit of a gentleman in me, and that little bit of a gentleman is saying that everything else should be for her eyes only.
Now I’m torn ‘cause I can’t decide which is sexier: leaving something for the imagination, or having a healthy enough self-image to have no problem baring a little for the camera. When I’d first taken Monique’s photos two years ago, she’d seemed a little tense, if not squeamish, and it would show in her face, and in the way she’d moved (or not moved, for that matter), and that was actually one of the reasons why the resulting photos from that shoot had left much to be desired. This time, however, it was as if it was a totally different girl standing in front of me: calmer, more composed, and thus more radiant—still aware of her flaws, but was mature enough to just laugh about them. I asked her what had changed, and she shared that she’d been taking yoga classes for months now. It’s amazing what a renewed commitment to fitness can do to you—not just physically to your body, but to how you feel about yourself, as well. And nothing is more beautiful to photograph than someone who is clearly comfortable in their own skin.
Monique Rosal | Photographed by Angelo Kangleon in Cebu City, Cebu, on March 24, 2013 | Hair and makeup by Alex Nicole Lorenzana | Special thanks to Christine L. Abragan
To Market, to Market: Eduardo and Ella
When Ella Pansacala and Eduardo Genson first sent me an e-mail middle of last year to describe how they wanted their engagement photos to look like, I was baffled, to say the least. They mentioned “road trip,” which I totally got, and which got me excited, because wasn’t that a kind of recurring theme in most my love shoots under the Shutterfairy Photography banner (or even outside of it)? But then they launched into more detail, bringing up a “roadside fruit and/or vegetable stand,” an “old chapel where we can offer a short prayer,” and a “picnic-style luncheon with all-Filipino fare.” They even mentioned “discoral,” a vernacular term for the outdoor dance parties held in rural areas, typically during town or barrio fiestas. Sensing that I was a little lost and needed a some visual guidance, they followed it up with a mood board that showed pictures of a woman shopping for fruits and vegetables at a small wet market, of a couple praying inside an old chapel, of various dishes served during a traditional Filipino town/barrio fiesta, and of a bunch of people merrymaking at a rural street party. This was when it occurred to me: they wanted something that was very Filipino! How they arrived at this idea, I don’t know. Perhaps it was because they felt they’d been away from home for so long (both of them were Singapore-based now), and they felt they needed to do something to pay homage to their roots?
Not gonna lie: my first impulse was to talk them out of it, and not because I thought the whole thing was a little too tacky for my taste, but rather because I seemed to know I was no expert on the matter (full disclosure now: I cannot tell the different between piña fabric and jusi fabric to save my life). But then I thought about it and realized, wasn’t this exactly was I was looking for in a client? Didn’t I always ask for clients who made their own creative decisions, and who were brave enough to try something new and out of the ordinary? Now that I had such clients right in front of me, who I was to stifle them and the very qualities that I was looking for? I had to admit that, among the more than fifty mood boards that my e-mail inbox had seen, most of which contained “Westernized” cultural references, theirs was like a breath of fresh air. And so I had to pull myself together and declare, “Let’s do this!”
As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about thing, because although my level of expertise when it came to anything traditional Filipino was close to nil, I had lots of friends to help me out! When it was time for me to start making a list of possible shooting locations, for example, I didn’t have to rack my brains or do an awful lot of scouting and ocular inspections, because my good friend Owen Taboada (the makeup artist) readily suggested this one spot along the Cebu Transcentral Highway up the hills of Busay (a few miles past Ayala Heights, if I am not mistaken) that had roadside vegetable and fruit stands—exactly the kinds that Ella and Eduardo had in mind for their “roadside market” photos! Another awesome thing about this place was it was only a few steps away from a sort of lookout park, which came with a bunch of picnic tables—perfect spot for a barrio fiesta luncheon scene! As for the clothes, I was keen on making room for the barong Tagalog and the baro’t saya (traditional Filipino garments), but didn’t know where to get them—thank God my friend Kristin Seno was willing to lend me a couple of pieces from her closet! For the props and set decoration, I was completely hands-off and left it all to the able hands of Shutterfairy’s in-house set decorator Jenny. I was aware of Jenny’s capabilities, but had no idea that when I handed this to her she would be really enthusiastic about it—turns out that this theme was right up her sweet spot (something to do, I guess, with how, as a child, she’d been really participative in elementary school-initiated culturally-inclined activities like Linggo ng Wika [National Language Week, held every August]). She jumped right in and amassed quite a robust amount of stuff to use for the shoot, including items I would never have been able to find on my own, like paperback romance novels in Tagalog, and a PVC-coated tablecloth in a frowzy chintz-like tropical fruit/flower pattern like those they typically use in carenderias or roadside eateries (if there is a Filipino version of shabby chic, then this tablecloth is poster child for it)! She even found a way to incorporate cheesy Filipino pick-up lines into the picture—inspired, perhaps, by the 2010 John Lloyd Cruz starrer My Amnesia Girl? The couple’s good friend (and wedding coordinator) Rey Awing was kind enough to help out with the set decoration aspect, too, particularly for the picnic-style luncheon set—it was him who called to shots when it came to deciding what kinds of Filipino dishes were going to end up in the picnic table (he opted for the mixed vegetable dish pinakbet, grilled whole fish, and street-style pork barbecue, among others), and providing the palayoks (traditional Filipino earthen pots). Preparations took a good four months—about the longest amount of time we’d had to spend preparing for a single shoot—and at one point I even posted on Twitter that this was shaping up to be “our most challenging shoot ever!” But when the day of the shoot came and everything fell into its right place…well, as anyone who has experienced something like this before knows, it felt amazing.
Not very confident about the styling aspect, especially since, with the South China Sea between the couple and I, we virtually had no time for fittings and all that good stuff, but I think I made some pretty passable creative decisions. Like electing to not go all-out costumey for the set in which they were to don Filipiniana wear, for example—I asked them to do away with the saya and the formal trousers, and wear shorts with their baro and barong instead, just to give the look a funky, unorthodox twist. The whole thing came out cute in my eyes, but I hope this does not raise the eyebrows of Filipiniana purists out there—OK, now I got to knock on wood for good measure! One thing made me extremely happy, though, and that’s the fact that I finally found an excuse to involve one of my most prized possessions in the picture: a circa late ‘90s limited edition T-shirt with a the face of Philippine cinema supervillain Bella Flores printed on it, by Cecile Zamora-van Straten (yes, before she launched the very popular Chuvaness.com she used to design streetwear and run a crazy cool store named Grocery)! I’d never thought I’d see the day I’d take it out for a spin again and give it the star treatment it deserved!
We never got to find an old chapel for the prayer scenes that they’d wanted—I mean, I knew of a chapel in the Busay area, and in fact I’d used it as backdrop for another engagement shoot back in 2011, but that chapel had a closed door policy, and Ella had made it clear she wanted pictures of them inside the thing, kneeling and praying. So we decided to do this set at a big old church instead, and the couple picked the Basílica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu. It was a bit of a challenge, because our shoot was on a Sunday (imagine the throng of churchgoers that we had to deal with), but the church turned out to be the perfect choice because we got to take photos of them doing a lot more than just kneeling. Loved the part where they got one of the many women candle peddlers to offer up an intercessory prayer to the Santo Niño via the storied “candle dance” (known as the “Sinulog dance” to us locals)—not just very Filipino, but very Cebuano.
Another thing we never got to get around doing was the “discoral” scene, just ‘cause, well, we never got to find us a “discoral” to serve as backdrop! Trust me, I tried—it was weeks and weeks of research, and I even approached some friends in the Provincial Government to see if I could get a list of towns/barrios that celebrated their fiestas on the week that we were shooting. After all those efforts proved futile, I decided to just recreate the look and feel of a barrio fiesta road trip—complete with a “Sarao”-style jeepney, and a couple of background actors to serve as the couple’s companions/co-passengers. I had Jenny scout for the perfect jeepney (it had to look a little rundown, not too immaculate), and asked Ella and Eduardo to invite a bunch of friends, and—voila!—we got the photos that we wanted! This wasn’t the first time we used background actors to be part of an engagement shoot—back in March of last year we’d also asked a bunch of kids to be part of a classroom set of a Glee-inspired shoot. It’s something we at Shutterfairy are kind of proud of, because we’ve never seen other people do engagement shoots in this manner before, at least not in other parts of the world. To borrow the Philippine Department of Tourism’s now ubiquitous slogan, it definitely is “more fun in the Philippines!”
Eduardo Genson, Jr. and Ella Pansacala | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon for Shutterfairy in Cebu City on December 23, 2012 | Main photographer: Malou Pages for Shutterfairy | Hair and makeup by JingJing F. Manching | Set decorator: Jennifer Hortillosa | Special thanks to: Rey Awing and Kristin Seno
Time and Tide: Richard and Norris
It was an afternoon so full of texture, everything seemed to jump right at you, like the contents of a magical children’s pop-up book, or of a carefully curated scrapbook. The white powdery sand that managed to get in your shoes no matter how cautiously you treaded. Aged wooden staircases that led to the beach. The incredibly Byzantine grand sand castle etched with the words “All you need is love.” Towering, spindly golden bamboos that not only rustled in the breeze but also seemed to reached out to tickle you every time you walked past them. Chunky couches and daybeds upholstered in coarse linen cloth that made you want to sneak in a little siesta time whenever you could. Soft rose petals in different shades of blush strewn on the ground. A dainty looking cake embellished with seashells of all shapes and sizes—cockles, scallops, alphabet cones, boring turrets—both edible and real. A curtain of cascading crystal glass beads that gleamed lustrously in the glorious afternoon light. The delicate, billowing drapes of the bridesmaids’ rose-colored goddess-inspired dresses. The intricate beadwork and the diaphanous mini rosettes in the bride’s ivory silk satin organza fluted dress (by Alvina Valenta from Chicago’s Bella Bianca). The row of diamantes in the bride’s Badgley Mischka “Gisele” wedge sandals in rose satin (true story: this pair of shoes was the most photographed and most videographed item that day; we even panicked when, twenty or so mintes before the bride was scheduled to walk down the aisle, we couldn’t find them, only to realize that the video guys had left them somewhere near the pool!). So full of texture, you just wanted to reach out and touch everything. It was as if the couple had intended it that way so that you could feel the love rather than, well, just look at it.
Then again, even if you were to strip off all these textural elements, you would still end up with the same touchy-feely kind of affair: the whole thing was so intimate—only a little over 40 guests, if I am not mistaken—that it was impossible to turn your head and not spot people holding each other, or hugging each other tight. Pretty brilliant move on the couple’s part to have invited only a small number of people to this event—just their immediate families, a few extended family members, and some of their closest friends. Not a single person who was present ever felt left out as everyone got to play a part in and contribute to the celebration. Brought a huge smile to everyone’s faces when it was time to toast to the bride and groom and all four groomsmen—plus two other guys—took turns in sharing their heartfelt stories about how they’d been there from the start, how they’d helped pick out flowers for the couple’s first date, even how they’d conspired to get the two back together after a misunderstanding. Swear to God, two of the guys even cried while telling their stories, I even joked to one of the ushers: “What’s with all the bromance?” Really, though, it was nothing to joke about; if anything, it only made the affair more special by proving that not only was this a celebration of one love shared between two people, but also of the other relationships built around it.
So many other tender and, at times, poignant moments that blew us as spectators away. My boss/mentor Malou Pages, who was main photographer that day, confessed that she got a little weak in the knees when the groom cried as he watched his beautiful bride coming down the aisle. Women have a thing for that sort of stuff, I guess—you should’ve heard the collective sighs from the lady guests the moment they saw the man burst into tears. I will admit I was kind of moved by this, too. I mean, it was a moment: here was tall, dark, handsome, and brooding manly man who couldn’t fold a pocket square to save his life, showing vulnerability. But that was Malou’s favorite moment, and she beat me to it, so I had to wait for another one. Luckily it came later in the evening when it was time for the newlyweds’ parents to give their speeches, and the bride’s mother took to the mic sobbingly to tell the wedding party about how she’d been “estranged” from her daughter for close to a decade due to some differences, but that she was immensely happy all that had finally been put behind them and she could be a part of this most important day of her baby girl’s life. We love weddings for how they bring two people and two families together—how even sweeter they become when they heal old wounds!
I have a second favorite moment, though, and that’s when it was time for “You may now kiss the bride,” and suddenly the Boracay sky was awash with the hues of a thousand sunsets. They say “time and tide wait for no man,” but I’m pretty sure that, in that moment, when the sky changed its color, both time and tide stood still. I was one big goosebump right there. The last time I’d seen a sky this orange and this soothingly warm was some four years back, at one of my best friends’ wedding in another island paradise (Dakak). I don’t know what it is about orange skies that make me giddy. It’s the same way I feel about Alexi Murdoch’s song entitled, well, “Orange Sky” that goes: “And I had a dream/ I stood beneath an orange sky/ Here is what I know now… / In your love my salvation lies…” Perhaps it’s the silent promise they bring? You know, that, no matter what happens, at the end of the day you can forget about existentialism, because, like it or not, it will always boil down to warmth? Maybe so. I don’t know. All I know is they’re nothing short of magical, and that they make me thank God I’m alive.
Thank you, Richard and Norris, for having us out to share in your special day, and for trusting us to capture your most tender moments! (And thanks to your fam and your gang, as well, for their incredible hospitality!) It was one of the dreamiest weddings we had ever been to—definitely one for the books! No need to wish you guys the best, because we just know your marriage is going to be as bountiful as your texture-rich wedding, and as warm as the orange sky that witnessed your vows!
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I was gonna say this was my first ever wedding assignment, but that would be lying, because the truth is this was my third—I did get to take a couple of pictures at my brother James’s wedding last September, and then at another Shutterfairy couple’s wedding in October. I must say, though, that this right here was the first time I was really happy about my shots. Didn’t really get to take a lot of pictures of the bride, though, as you can see here, because I was assigned to the groom while Malou took care of the bride’s side of things—apparently that’s how things work—but I did get to hang around the bridal suite long enough for me to take a few decent shots.
I’d never imagined that I would be doing weddings, and in fact in the days leading to this assignment I’d tried to talk Malou out of taking me with her, saying she should find someone else to be her second shooter. Two reasons: (1) Not a big fan of crowds, and (2) Boracay wasn’t exactly my favorite place in the world (after something very terrible had happened to me there some three years back).
Eventually I’d had to just go, especially after realizing that (1) there was no way the airline was going to allow us to change the name on my ticket, and (2) I couldn’t afford to bail out on this couple the second time around. Yes, I’d been set to photograph Richard and Norris’s engagement session in Chicago last May, but that had had to be cancelled due to scheduling issues. I’m glad I didn’t miss them this time around!
And thank God it was a beach wedding with only a few guests—I would’ve cracked under pressure had it been, say, a city wedding with more than 300 people! And thank God they’d chosen a spot in a relativey remote part of the island (the Asya Premier Suites down Manoc-Manoc, in the southwester tip of the island)—I would’ve gone crazy had they opted to do it in the cramped Station 2 or something!
Now, if you ask me if I’ve changed my mind about doing weddings, my answer to that would be “I don’t know.” But go ahead and show me one that’s as beautiful and intimate as this one right here, and I just might say yes!
Finally, before I go, a word about destination wedding planner extraordinaire Amanda Tirol and her staff at Boracay Weddings: I have never before seen an events coordination team this on top of things, and this professional, all while being incredibly welcoming. More than that, I just loved how Amanda was oozing with impeccable taste, evident in her execution of the littlest details, and how her business savvy was topped with an obvious passion to share—she readily dispensed sage advice on how to effectively deal with long-distance clients, and taught me more in ten minutes than others could in years! The star of the show, though, was Sasha, Amanda’s little daughter (I think she’s only ten or 11 years old!), who was constantly running around the place, helping her mom make sure that the clients’ (and the vendors’) needs were met, and that the program ran smoothly without delays. My heart ballooned at the sight of this mother-and-daughter team dynamic. Not so different, really, from how I feel about the most intimate of affairs.
Richard Realeza and Norris Nanoz | Photographed by Angelo Kangleon for Shutterfairy in Boracay Island, Malay, Aklan, on December 20, 2012 | Main photographer: Malou Pages for Shutterfairy | Illustrations by Borţa Gabriela Mihaela (visit her DeviantArt site here) | Wedding planner: Amanda Tirol for Boracay Weddings | Videographer: Jake Olaso | Floral styling by Vatel Manila | Bride’s wedding dress, Alvina Valenta, Bella Bianca | Groom’s suit, Indochino | Special thanks to the staff of Asya Premier Suites Boracay
Revenge of the Nerds: Sam and Joan
What gets me up in the morning? Full disclosure: I am the most motivated and diligent person you can imagine, and yet I still can’t help but give in to the temptation of just staying in bed and being comatose like that during the first few hours after waking up. And it’s not even a hoity-toity, I-don’t-wake-up-for-less-than-insert-amount-here kind of thing—if anything, it’s more of a comfort/leisure thing, no different from, say, getting a massage at the tail end of an extremely grueling day/week. At home I have set some ground rules, and one of them is for no one to disturb me in the morning, unless it’s an emergency. On working days I resist and desist from hitting the snooze button only when I know I have to catch an early morning call time or flight; otherwise, it’s my best friend. And I schedule all my sit-down meetings, personal shopping appointments and house calls in the afternoon. For Sam and Joan here, though, I had to make an exception—our first few meetings had to be held in the early morning! They’d just flown in from New Zealand, you see, where they were now based, which meant that 8 AM for us was already 1 PM for them! And I knew better than to not respect jet lag of any degree!
The issue of, um, messed-up body clocks aside, though, it was really the couple’s we-mean-business kind of air that had me scrambling to put my game face on before I could even have my breakfast. In all our initial correspondence with this couple, you see, they, especially Joan, had made it clear they were the meticulous and scrupulous types. Discussions around possible shooting locations, for example, had taken days; and for each minor detail I’d mentioned they would get back to me with a list of clarifying questions. Judging from all that, I knew I couldn’t afford to slack one damned bit when it came to this assignment. It was time to roll the sleeves up like I’d never rolled them up before!
Of course, by meticulous and scrupulous, I’m not saying that Sam and Joan were trying to be difficult, or that they wanted something complex for their engagement photos. As a matter of fact, they wanted to keep things simple! Both of them were techies, and both of them worked in IT (I think that’s how they met, if I am not mistaken), so they asked for a bright light to be shone on that aspect—they mentioned that the wedding invites were going to bear line art of a little boy and a little girl tinkering with computers, and so they wanted their pictures to be in keeping up with this theme. They also wanted to incorporate some of their old toys in the picture: Joan had an old teddy bear that she just couldn’t part with until this very day, and Sam was an avid collector of robot action figures (Voltron, Transformers, Gundam…you name it, he’s got it!). Pretty uncomplicated, right? Well, that was what I thought, too—until it was time to figure out how to put these things together into something that would make sense! How to mix the techie/nerdy/geeky motif with a child’s play theme? Should we roll them together into one picture, or keep them as two separate, distinct parts of a story? Also, how to expand the whole thing? Because, to me, just two elements/sets felt like we were falling short. There also was a debate on what kind of techie stuff/gadgets should be included the picture—I was partial to the idea of old, yellowed computers, while the couple favored the more modern, sophisticated devices, like iPads. More importantly, there was the styling aspect to give extra careful thought to: should we go for the nerdy/geeky clothes all the way, or should we make a little room for playful, feminine touches for Joan?
So, you see, it all didn’t turn out to be a walk in the park after all, and, boy, was I glad I’d conditioned myself for that from the get-go! In fact, the shoot had to be pushed back a couple of months—from July to December—because we felt we needed more time to deliberate and come up with really effective decisions. Ultimately we decided that it was wise for us to keep the computers in one picture and the toys in another; that the computers had to be the old, yellowed ones, and if we were to incorporate the iPads then they would have to be in a separate set; and that Joan should infuse a little “girliness” into her wardrobe to achieve a perfect balance between playful and romantic. It was looking for the perfect dresses that took time and that took quite a toll on us, actually: we had these very specific styles in mind—Peter Pan collar for one, sweetheart neckline for the other, and both had to have circle skirts that sat just right above the knee—but we just couldn’t find them here in Cebu, so Joan had to take this assignment with her to New Zealand, and after weeks upon weeks of scouring the shops (both physical and online) she was able to take these two gorgeous babies home with her! I have to mention that the blue dress didn’t really come with a Peter Pan collar when she bought it—she just layered a white Peter Pan-collared lace top underneath it to achieve the effect that we were gunning for! This just proved how conscientious and detail-oriented Joan was, and how inventive, too!
So happy with how everything fell into place on the day of the shoot. In the days leading to it, you see, I’d been poring over our list obsessively, thinking, What’s all this going to look like put together? Thankfully we didn’t end up with a big mess on our hands, and instead were able to produce pictures that were at turns whimsical and lighthearted; elaborate, but not to a point of being fussy; fun, but not to a point of being mischievous. There were times the setup looked theatrically artificial—CD-ROM-covered wall, anyone?—but Sam and Joan neutralized this by being strikingly natural in front of the camera! I was overwhelmed, too, by the feedback that the resulting photos got from the couple’s family and friends—everyone they knew was floored! But the biggest honor came from D.C.-based photographer and photo session cool hunter Maggie Winters when she featured this very session in her Website For Awesome People, commending us for the “crazy cool” concept and the “incredible styling.” Our work had been featured in a bunch of locally-based bridal/wedding inspiration Websites in the past, but this was the first time that someone from halfway across the world had taken notice—kind of a big deal for us at Shutterfairy Photography!
Not about to take all the credit, though, because, like I’ve mentioned, this wasn’t all our doing. Sam and Joan knew exactly how they wanted the photos to come out, showed no signs of being pushovers, and got involved in each and every little step of the creative process. Us and them, a match made in collaboration heaven! So, going back to the original question that I posed: What gets me up in the morning? It’s people who are as motivated and passionate about creative execution as I am, if not more! How do I get more clients like these in my life?
Samuel Cabasa and Mary Joan Desamparado | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon for Shutterfairy in Cebu City, Cebu, on December 17, 2012 | Main photographer: Malou Pages for Shutterfairy | Hair and makeup by Jay Failanga | Set decorator: Jennifer Hortillosa | Special thanks to Joy Climaco of St.James Amusement Park and the staff of Anzani New Mediterranean Restaurant
Why Don’t We Paint the Town: The Malimbans
Here’s the family session that the folks at Shutterfairy Photography and I did early last month. Meet Eric and Annie Malimban, and their adorable son Eael. This young family had just transplanted themselves to Cebu from Manila just a little over a year ago. This shoot was actually a last-minute addition to our calendar—as early as October, Malou (my boss/mentor at Shutterfairy) and I had already closed our December calendars, agreeing to no longer accept bookings for that month since it had already been jam-packed with engagement sessions and weddings. When Annie mentioned, though, that having a family portrait session was kind of “a yearly thing” for them, and so she could not afford to move it to January since, well, that would be a completely different year altogether, and the thought of letting 2012 pass them by was crippling to them, we just had to say yes. Who were we to break the cycle of an inspired family tradition, right? That was just not our style.
I will admit it: I was pretty flustered the whole time I was working on this assignment, and that was because I knew I only had a a few days to plan and prepare for it! I’d used to think I was the kind of person who could work well under pressure, but apparently not! I had to apologize to Eric and Annie, explaining that I was so used to being given a month or two to prepare for a shoot, no matter how simple or complex. It offered very little comfort knowing that I was technically going to be a one-man show this time around—our resident set decorator had asked to sit this one out, since she’d already made arrangements to fly to Manila for a vacation! Fortunately Eric and Annie understood where I was coming from, and committed to help out with the props aspect of it.
As we were discussing possible concepts, Annie only had one request: by hook or by crook, we were to steer clear of anything that involved beaches, pools, or any body of water for that matter. And understandably so, because most of the pictures they’d had done in recent years had exhausted this theme to no end—they’d done the Plantation Bay Resort and Spa back in late 2011, and, if I’m not mistaken, even the Bellaroca Island Resort in Marinduque the year before that. Asked what she had in mind for this time, she mentioned that she kind of liked the “feel” of this one Guess ad she’d once come across, which involved “an old vehicle, a dirt road, and sunset.” She couldn’t remember where she’d seen this, though, and I could not for the life of me recall a Guess ad that had all the elements she cited—I was pretty much stumped at the ones starring Claudia Schiffer that incorporated a convertible and a Vespa-like scooter, or that one featuring Anna Nicole Smith as sexy chauffeur, but I was pretty sure these weren’t what Annie had in mind. Perhaps she was talking about a Guess Kids campaign? In which case I would be totally clueless! After two full days of hardcore research and I still couldn’t dig up the picture in her mental mood board, I showed her a photo of Jude Law, Sadie Frost and their children, shot by Steven Klein (for the July 2002 issue of American Vogue, if memory serves me right), which shows the family stranded on a dirt road on what looked like a fiendishly hot afternoon, and Law on his back pretend-fixing their beaten-up old yellow car. At the sight of this photo Annie’s face lit up. So this was the kind of “feel” she wanted for their photos: the grease monkey vibe!
I was about ready to phone people I knew who owned car repair shops in order to secure a location or borrow a beaten-up automobile when suddenly I was beset with a nagging feeling from inside of me telling me to rethink the whole thing: aside from the fact that we’d already used the car repair shop as backdrop before (and I knew Malou wasn’t a fan of “repeating themes”), I figured it was a little too “stiff” for a family session. I mean, sure, it worked for Jude Law and family, and that Steven Klein photo was beautiful, but that was for a fashion magazine—that kind of picture would definitely look odd hung on a family room wall! Also, I had to consider: Was the little boy going to have fun pretending to fix battered, rusty cars? Just like that I had to put the brakes on the whole thing, and decided to pitch a funner, literally more colorful concept: something that involved fingerpainting! I don’t know, I guess I was inspired by this one photo by Melbourne-based young photographer Nirrimi Hakanson of a little girl with paint all over her chubby cheeks and chest, which had been haunting me for months. At first Annie was a little apprehensive about the paint element (who wouldn’t be, especially if you think about the resulting mess?), but I explained: “Kids are difficult to photograph, especially if they know they’re getting nothing out of it. But if we make it fun for them, they’ll cooperate!” She still wasn’t convinced. But then her hubby turned to the little boy and asked, “What’s it gonna be, Eael? Fixing cars, or painting?” Without a moment’s hesitation, Eael replied, “Painting!” Just like that, the verdict was in. Love it when it’s a kid that gets to call the shots on these matters!
It’s easy to see why Eric and Annie pretty much allow their son to be the boss—such a standup guy, that little fellow! You won’t believe how hyperactive he was on the day of the shoot: the moment we arrived at our shooting location (the Celestial Gardens up the Banawa Hills), he couldn’t wait for the whole thing to start—and once we got it rolling, well, it began to look like he didn’t want it to ever end! Quite the role-player, too, I must say! Whatever expression or mood we asked him to take on, he was down for it, and executed it flawlessly. And did I mention extremely polite, and very keen on following instructions? As a matter of fact, the only instruction that he didn’t heed was the part where I asked him not to mix the paints—I seemed to know that if you mixed red, blue, yellow and green together it would come out really nasty, and true enough when he turned a deaf ear to my orders and proceeded to combine all four colors he ended up with grey goop all over!—but I knew better than to hold this against him, because what was important was that he was having a blast. What I loved most about him, though, was how he was incredibly articulate for his age. I can’t remember it all now, but I am pretty sure he used at least 20 or so big words that day. I’d asked Eric and Annie to pack with them some of the little boy’s favorite toys and books, and as he took each item out of the bag he would show it to me and tell me an interesting story about it—it was clear his favorite activity was show and tell! He made it very clear, though, that he was in no hurry to grow up when I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he snapped, “Can I have a little brother first?” Too adorable, I know! Made me wish my little nephews were as gabby as he!
Annie and Eric, thank you so much for allowing us to share this colorful day with your family! Most of all, thank you for bringing such an amazing child into this world! I hope you guys rewarded him for doing such an incredible job at our shoot—a new toy, a new book, whatever! And when you run out of toys and books to give him, maybe you will consider giving him that little brother that he’s been asking for!
Eric and Laarnie “Annie” Malimban and their son Eael | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon for Shutterfairy in Cebu City on December 9, 2012 | Main photographer: Malou Pages for Shutterfairy | Hair and makeup by Alex Nicole Lorenzana
Meet Me on the Sunny Road: Gerald and Barbara
Seriously, though: Exactly how small is the world getting? When my boss/mentor at Shutterfairy Photography Malou Pages told me we were going to be doing this couple’s engagement session, she didn’t mention much about the groom-to-be, only waxed poetic about the bride-to-be, saying that “you’re going to love her—she is very, very pretty!” So imagine my surprise when I went to sit down with the couple for our initial meeting and I found out that the groom-to-be was Gerald Serafin, who was not only the cousin of Rachelle Jean “RJ” Serafin-Bual, for whom we did a cowboy-themed engagement shoot back in 2010, but also brother to my good friend Ace, who was married to one of my closest friends Camille! From that moment I knew I had to do a good job with this assignment—Ace and Camille are like family to me, so I couldn’t afford to do a sucky job with this one! Of course, I also couldn’t discount the fact that Malou was right about Gerald’s fiancée Barbara being very pretty—I couldn’t stop staring at her face and thinking, I am going to have one hell of a field day styling/photographing this girl! She had the face of an angel. She reminded me of the model Kristine Petersen, who reigned supreme back in the day (1990s/early 2000s) as part of the original lineup (along with Malou Gica, Steevee Mahboob, and Elite Model Look- Philippines 1996 winner Charity Lagahid) of the inimitable Models Association of Cebu (MAC). That thought alone was enough to get me real excited.
Gerald is a businessman and an architecture enthusiast who runs a small but successful countertop and cabinetry business, but what most people don’t know is he is also a health and fitness buff who is obsessed with cycling. In his free time, usually on weekends, he likes to go on biking trips, and, mind you, we’re not talking the usual 5-6 miles up the hills of Busay—we’re talking hardcore here, like, some 70 miles down south of the island and back! Don’t ask me where he gets all that energy and drive, but he did get to talking about why he enjoyed exploring the southern parts more than any other area of Cebu: he loved the scenery, especially the old buildings/structures. Perhaps to feed his fascination of placemaking? He cited one favorite: Ruins of an unfinished coral-block cuartel or barrack stand dating back to the mid-1800s, which sat immediately in front of Oslob’s Church of the Immaculate Conception, facing the sea. He showed me a couple of photos of the place that he took using his camera phone during a recent biking trip, and my eyes widened at how majestic it looked—how come I’d never heard of this place before? The more he talked about it, the more it became palatable in my mind, and so I wasted no time in proposing: “We should do the shoot right here!” They liked the idea, but Barbara expressed that she was hoping we could do a couple of beach shots, too—having grown up in Bohol, this girl was, more than anything, a beach bum. I assured her this wasn’t going to be a problem, since weren’t there a string of beach towns—Argao, Dalaguete, Alcoy, etc.—on the way to Oslob from the city? The thought of turning the shoot into a road trip at the same time was enough to get me pumped. I’d used to not be a fan of road trips—those things had used to make me throw up, literally and figuratively, to put it rather bluntly—and I’d even told my boss at one point that, for engagement shoots, “I prefer not moving around too much, and just sticking to one location that has it all.” Eventually, though, I’d learned to re-embrace the idea of road tripping, thinking, I live in this incredible island—I just have to own that!
The styling part came really easy, too. I mean, when you look at someone with a face and a body like Barbara’s, what kind of clothes do you imagine on her? I was pretty much stumped at warm-weather clothes! And that wasn’t something I hoped to change! No other look made sense on her—I examined her ethereal hair, her amber eyes, her megawatt smile, and I saw a thousand summers written on them. You know the song “Sunny Road” by Emilíana Torrini? That was the song that played in my head the whole time I was talking to her. So, like reflex, I proceed to look to Free People’s May 2012 catalog (the one they shot in Miami; click here to view photos from that catalog) for inspiration, with a hint of Blake Lively’s carefree California girl character Ophelia “O” Sage from Oliver Stone’s thriller blockbuster Savages (July 2012)—kaftan tops, low-rise denim cutoffs, colorful maxi dresses, semi-sheer summer shirts, headscarves, bikinis, some crochet, and some tie-dye. The whole thing was equal parts boho, surfer chic, and Coachella! They were the kinds of clothes that would be in my closet had I been a girl living in L.A. or Laguna Beach! The sweetest thing was I didn’t have to do an awful lot of legwork in order to look for these items, because between Barbara’s and Camille’s closets we were able to put together at least 20 or so outfits! Yes, we spent one whole afternoon cooped up in Camille’s walk-in closet (Barbara had dragged in three bags full of her clothes—one of which contained about thirty pairs of bikinis!), going through racks upon racks and piles upon piles of their stuff, mixing and matching to our hearts’ content! So much fun! The only tough part was having to deliberate which of the twenty outfits were going to make it into the final lineup, but we got there eventually. Thank God for helping hands!
The weather was pretty crazy on the day of the shoot—I woke up at 4 in the morning, and it was raining like hell, and it stayed that way during our entire drive to Oslob! I was just about ready to slip into a mild depression (uncooperative atmospheric conditions = bane of my existence), but then Gerald and Barbara stepped in front of the cameras, all goofy and dorky, and just like the skies started to clear up, like magic! I love that they’re like a crazy bunch—they’re always trying to make each other laugh, and they love to pull crazy stunts on each other. Even my boss Malou, who’s photographed close to a hundred couples since started Shutterfairy, tells me that she’s never seen a relationship like theirs before: “It’s nice because it’s like they’re just two friends hanging out, having a good time.” You won’t believe it when I tell you the story of how Gerald proposed: Barbara was lazing around his bedroom while he took a shower, and moments later he would emerge from the bathroom in nothing but a towel, engagement ring in hand, saying, “I love you!” And that was it! No “Will you marry me?” or “Will you do me the honor of being my wife?” I’m not too sure whether or not Barbara uttered a distinct and deliberate “Yes!” It is assumed just she just took the ring with a big laugh, and that was her version of a “Yes!” If finding someone that makes you laugh is the recipe for a perfect marriage, then it well may be that Gerald and Barbara wrote that cookbook.
Did I mention that they have a lot of things in common, too? I think I only mentioned it was Gerald who loved cycling, but the truth is that’s actually something they liked to do together—he has a big room next to their living room that houses all their bikes and cycling gear/equipment, and I think half of them he bought for Barbara. They even have matching cycling jerseys (most of them in blue, maybe because that’s their favorite color). They also share a common love of dogs! If you were to ask them who the boss was in their relationship, they would probably tell you it’s their Labrador Retriever Princess, or their dachshund Macky. Princess even got to tag along with us on the day of the shoot—that added a really nice touch to the photos! I would’ve wanted for Macky to join in the fun, too, because he was such a dashing little fellow, but then he was grounded at the time ‘cause just a few days back he’d gotten into trouble by chasing an unsuspecting jogger and gnawing at the poor guy’s, um, balls! After hearing this horror story I decided perhaps if would be best if Macky just sat this one out. I mean, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to engage in any activity where there was a possibility of canines chewing on my body parts! No hard feelings, Macky!
Gerald and Barbara tied the knot last December 5. At first we’d worried it was going to be gloomy on their wedding day, and that they’d had to deal with a lingering vestige of the tropical storm Bopha that had hit the previous day. Quite miraculously, as in what had happened during their engagement shoot, when it was time for them to put on their show, the skies cleared and the sun came out! Trust the elements to align for you when you’ve got a sunny disposition, apparently! I couldn’t make it to the wedding, but I was just looking at the photos that Malou took that day and I couldn’t help but feel my heart balloon at how radiant Barbara looked—could she be the most beautiful bride in the world? Of course, when you look at those same photos, there’s no missing Gerald’s signature naughty grin, too—it’s either he may have been born with it, or that was his way of saying, “My bride is prettier than yours!” I wish them more charming old towns and beautiful beaches to bike through and explore, and more puppies to cuddle with. Most of all, I wish them more grey skies to turn bright and blue!
Gerald Serafin and Barbara Jean Duncan | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon for Shuttefairy in Oslob and Alcoy, Cebu, on October 21, 2012 | Main photographer: Malou Pages for Shutterfairy |Hair and makeup by Vanessa T. Gamus (to book Vanessa, click here) | Special thanks to Camille Blanco-Serafin and Marla Baguio
A Holiday in the Sun: Edgar and Gwen
So, OK, my friends have been asking me what my favorite thing about this year was, and, gosh, and I don’t even know where to begin! Aside from the fact that the world didn’t end like they said it would last December 21, so many major stuff top my list, like finally meeting my baby niece in L.A., seeing a retrospective of my all-time favorite photographer Herb Ritts’s work at the Getty, and getting to meet and talk to my idol Lauren Conrad in the flesh on my birthday. Career-wise, though, I must say that the best part of 2012 was that I got to work with a lot of people from all over the place this year. And, well, not just me—that applies to the rest of the Shutterfairy Photography team, too! When I got back from California/New York, where I got to photograph a couple of people (mostly close friends and family, of course), suddenly we were barraged with assignments to photograph/style clients from the States, Singapore, New Zealand, Ireland, etc.! So crazy, I know! And to think our team is barely three years old! We must have done something right to deserve this huge boost to our reach!
The biggest bulk of our “extralocal” clients are from the Lion City, like Gwen and Edgar here. I’ve lost track of the exact figures, and to quote my boss/mentor Malou Pages, “I [can no longer] count how many Singapore-based couples [we have] photographed,” but suffice to say that it came to a point where it got us wondering: How did these people find out about us and our work? did these people know each other? did it start with one couple who were happy with our work, and then it all trickled down through their communities via viva voce? There might be no finding out now, but that’s OK. I’m just glad to know we have quite a fan base in a place where none of us (me or Malou) have even ever been to before in our lives!
It had used to baffle me why overseas-based couples to be married would opt to fly home to have their engagement photos taken here, when they could easily have them done in their new cities where the amount of gorgeous shooting locations are endless, and where I’m pretty sure there are no shortage of exceptionally talented portrait photographers and stylists. But working with Gwen and Edgar here made me realize this: these people wanted their engagement session to be a sort of homecoming at the same time, a nice little break from their busy working lives. In the case of this couple right here, it was to serve a third purpose: for Gwen to show Edgar her home. It’s just Gwen who’s from Cebu, you see, while Edgar is from Pampanga, and he’d already shown her around his hometown a couple of times in the past (the most recent being some six months before this shoot), and so now it was her turn to show him around hers. Which was why when Gwen said she wanted to do the shoot at a resort, I knew better than to oppose the idea. In most cases, you see, whenever our subjects bring up the faintest idea about shooting at a resort (most popular picks: the Plantation Bay Resort and Spa down Marigondon, Shangri-La’s Mactan Resort and Spa in Punta Engano, the newly opened Crimson Resort somewhere in the Maribago area), I would be quick to talk them out of it, just ‘cause everyone else was doing it, and I wasn’t a huge fan of crowds or onlookers. But who was I to say no to this couple, who made it very clear they wanted to treat this whole thing as a vacation at the same time? Their resort of choice was the Imperial Palace Waterpark Resort in Maribago. Relatively new and an irrefutable favorite among locals and tourists/vacationers alike, I just knew the crowds out there were going to be crazy and that it wasn’t going to be easy trying to look for decent, peaceful spots, but I took comfort in the fact that the clothes were going to be amazing.
Yes, that is one upside to shooting at a beach resort: the vacation theme calls for nothing else but resort style, and isn’t warm weather wear the easiest to put together? Ask every stylist you know, and they will tell you resortwear is, pun intended, a breeze—especially to those of us who are from these parts where we’ve got year-round sun-drenched climes! I mean, it was never something I had to closely study or do a lot of research on, just ’cause it was something that I saw everyday; and plus I got a good head start by virtue of my early experience at various Cebu-based magazines/publications, where, safe to say, about 70% of my styling work entailed resortwear and swimwear. For this assignment right here I had to keep it low-fuss and straightforward. At first I was tempted to look to various spring/summer catalogs from Free People for inspiration, but then there were too much Coachella-inspired elements and Bohemian references in there—Gwen here was nothing if not sweet and simple, and so I knew I had to keep the “overstyling” in check, lest I ended up stripping her of those qualities. Trendy, but a little more on the timeless side, that was the agreement. So what I did was I used the formula in the “Warm Weather Vacation” subsection of the “What to Wear Where” chapter of the Who What Wear book (ABRAMS, 2009): global prints (they “never go out of style,” according to the book, so I introduced Gwen to ikat), punchy brights, kaftans (“long enough to go over a bathing suit and brief enough to wear bloused up over a pair of shorts”), maxi dresses, denim cutoffs, statement necklaces, and hobo bags. (The nicest thing about all these outfits that we put together: Gwen will be able to use them after the shoot, like for, say, Sentosa weekends or something). Not to say we didn’t leave room for a little experimentation, though, because we did go for a little print-on-print/mixed prints action: I usually shy away from swimwear if it’s engagement shoots (except when the theme is surfing, then the Billabongs and Roxys becomes non-negotiable), but I politely asked Gwen if she could wear a bikini for the shots by the pool; this frightened her at first, but once I showed her the complete look—sheer beach wrap in traditional-color leopard print, over a fuchsia-and-black leopard print bikini—she went for it (albeit with a joke, “My very first daring role!”). Needless to say, that set we did by the pool was my favorite. Although coming in as a close second was the one that was never in the mood boards to begin with, and that’s the set we did in their hotel room where I had them wear nothing but bathrobes. I swear, pure accident: it was 2PM, and therefore too hot out for us to be able to take decent pictures, and as I walked into the room I realized I was digging the color scheme (eggshell and mint green!), so I decided to take pictures of them in there! I love happy accidents!
I guess I have to mention that, when all these e-mails from Singapore-based clients started to pour in, I initially declined them and proceeded to ask my boss to hire another stylist to do the job. My previous experience with long-distance styling, you see, had been extremely unpleasant, and in an effort to save face I expressed that, moving forward, I was only going to accept clients who lived in the same city as me—the job’s always easier when you can physically take their measurements, do house calls that give you the chance to take a peek inside their closets, or personal shop for them. It took the boss some time to find another stylist, though, so I had no choice but to take on some of the projects, and I remember choosing Gwen and Edgar here because during our initial correspondence they were very congenial—and thankfully they remained that way all throughout the planning phase! Just a couple of days ago we were in Boracay to photograph a Chicago-based couple’s beach wedding, and I met the inimitable and ever-effervescent wedding/events planner Amanda Tirol of Boracay Weddings, who told me that “about 80% of my clients are from out of the country,” and shared that the key to successful long-distance coordination was timely and effective correspondence. I couldn’t agree more. What I’d feared at the onset to be a rough ride turned out to be a smooth-sailing one, thanks to Gwen and Edgar’s timely feedback whenever I had questions. Helped, too, that they trusted my abilities, valued my input, and respected my boundaries, leaving what was to be done by me to, well, me! Now, if it looks like my faith in long-distance styling has been renewed, that’s thanks to this couple right here!
But what made this shoot truly memorable for me wasn’t all the prep, or the clothes, or the lengthy (but healthy) exchange of e-mails. Rather, it was the fact that, for a change, it was the groom-to-be that I connected with the most as we were shooting. Normally, you see, during engagement shoots, it’s the fiancée that I get to bond and exchange stories with—it’s always the woman that’s excited about things like this, right?—while the fiancé just sits on the sidelines, patiently waiting for the session to be over. Not saying that Gwen was detached that day, it’s just that she had a couple of close friends over for the occasion and she had to entertain them in between sets, and so it was Edgar who I got to chat with the whole time. It was kind of weird having to ask the guy about their love story, but Edgar was very eager to share, anyway. Unlike most of our Singapore-based couples, they didn’t meet in the workplace (in fact they work for two very different companies: she for United Overseas Bank, as systems analyst; he for the interior architectural design firm BuregaFarnell) , or through mutual friends—rather, it was their mutual love of volunteerism that brought them together. Yes, they shared a favorite cause, and that’s the Gawad Kalinga (GK), a movement dedicated to community- and home-building to help improve living standards among the deprived. One fateful day three years ago they attended the same GK Singapore fellowship meeting, and that’s where it all started—ever since then they would go on the same GK immersion/building activities/trips, and their relationship would eventually turn into a full-fledged romance. I’d heard about couples falling in love because they shared the same taste in music, or the same taste in food, etc., but this was the first time I met a twosome whose bond was cemented by their mutual love for reaching out. Something tells me this is one bond that will be very difficult to break.
Edgar Gonzales and Gwen Pinca | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon for Shutterfairy in Maribago, Lapu-Lapu, Cebu, on August 20, 2012 | Main photographer: Malou Pages for Shutterfairy | Hair and makeup: Ramil Solis | Special thanks to the staff of Imperial Palace Waterpark Resort
Cruisin’ is Made for Love: Anthony and Cindy
I was swimming in delight the whole time I was working on this couple’s engagement session. Cindy and Anthony here both worked for a cruise liner (the Norwegian Pearl, if I am not mistaken; her as guest service representative, him as stateroom steward), and that’s how they met, in August of 2010, and then fell in love two months later. When I found out about this detail I wasted no time in proposing the nautical theme for their photos—I mean, come on, was there any other theme that was going to make perfect sense? This was where all my excitement sprung from.
You see, along with grunge, the nautical look is one of my all-time favorites. It all started when, as a little boy, I would rummage through piles of my grandfather’s old magazines, and then one day I stumbled upon the December 27, 1968, issue of Life, with the artist Pablo Picasso wearing a classic Breton sailor shirt on the cover, photographed by Robert Doisneau in Vallauris (circa 1952). Ever since then I wouldn’t stop obsessing about it, collecting clippings of images of people wearing sailor/fisherman stripes (or patterns inspired by such), including the cover of the April 1993 issue of American Vogue—Helena Christensen, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, and Stephanie Seymour, all wearing the same red-and-white-striped crop tops by Marc Jacobs paired with white Daisy Dukes (photographed by Herb Ritts)—which I ended up tacking to my bedroom wall where it stayed for a good four or so years. Yes, my very first mood board, right there!
That Vogue cover, along with all the other clippings, would go missing after moving house so many times, but the iconography of the sailor/fisherman shirt was to remained anchored to my, um, creative psyche, and there it stayed lurking until it was time for it to resurface and dictate a good chunk of my “adult wardrobe.” Yes, it wasn’t until I hit the Big 3-0 that I decided to infuse some nautical staples into my closet—I mean, I’d been itching to from the start, but then I’d figured it was the kind of thing that required some maturity and a bit of worldliness in order to be pulled off successfully. On the eve of my 30th birthday I gifted myself with a trip to my favorite local designer Protacio Empaces, Jr.‘s atelier so he could make me a navy blazer with red-and-white seersucker lining and anchor motif brass buttons (that came out perfect, of course, and now that jacket is the champ of my wardrobe, and coming with me wherever I go—in fact, I am about to snatch it from my closet so I could take it with me to Boracay tomorrow where we are to shoot a beach wedding). Perfect timing, too, because it was around that exact same time that the sailor/fisherman shirt made a huge resurgence, fast trickling down the retail chains, perhaps taking a cue from Balmain’s F/W 2009 collection which showcased a chic version of the shirt that Picasso had made famous (now I have about four or five of these shirts: a couple from H&M, one from Zara, and one from Uniqlo). And it didn’t stop at what I was putting on my own back—pretty soon nautical stripes became one of my favorite gifts to give, too! And it didn’t stop at clothes—suddenly all the other aspects of my life were starting to look, um, seaward, like my travel sense, for example: all at once I was eschewing big city adventures in favor of seaside communes and harbor locales, like Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Marina del Rey, Redondo Beach, and even that area of Louisville by the Ohio River. Even my playlist was starting to be doused with nautical-themed tunes: “Sailing” by Christopher Cross, “Cruisin’” by Smokey Robinson, and “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding. And, would you believe, I even proceeded to change my “fantasy wedding” (come on, now, everyone has one), in keeping up with this theme—whereas before I’d dreamt of a grungy, rock ‘n’ roll-y kind of wedding, or something with a country theme (à la the wedding scene from 8 Seconds), now I was all about a nautical-inspired wedding (imagine me yelping in a Dionne-from-Clueless voice: “When I get married, I’m gonna have a sailor dress, but it’s going to be a gown, and all my bridesmaids are gonna wear sailor hats…”)!
All the above stories (except, of course, for the “fantasy wedding” part) were what I leveraged in building a strong case, to convince Cindy that this theme was in my “sweet spot” and that I knew it like the back of my hand. Thankfully, she gave it the green light, saying she had seen some of the work I’d done for one of her good friends Sheryl Guzman-Dauz, for whom we’d done a “vintage travel”-inspired engagement session, which had included a cruise-themed set! At first she had qualms about a certain detail: “Don’t horizontal stripes make you look big?” I reassured her that I’d used to think that, too, until my favorite style writers at WhoWhatWear debunked this myth by declaring that it actually “looks good on any body type.”
Needless to say, I had one hell of a field day putting these clothes together. After years of romancing the Doisneau portrait of Picasso and the cover of the April 1993 Vogue in my head, finally here was my chance to translate everything about them that I loved into my own work! Of course, these two images weren’t my only guiding light: the aforementioned WhoWhatWear article helped, too, by serving as a refresher course, and I also got some useful tips from an old issue of Lucky (July 2006, Milla Jovovich on the cover) that I’d unearthed from the storage, which contained a 4-page spread dedicated to how to add “a cool twist” to the traditional French nautical style. I must say that one of the reasons I like this theme/style is that it forces you to exercise a little bit of discipline—like, there’s a strict palette of blue, red and white, and you have to remain rooted to it (actually, yellow is part of the basic sailorman palette, too, owing to the slickers that sailors use and the brass buttons that come with service dress blues, but for this shoot I made a conscious effort to stick to just red, blue and white). Which is not to say I left no room for experimentation, of course—for one of the groom-to-be’s outfits I looked past the stripes in favor of a little polka dot flavor, and it still worked somehow! All this was made more fun, of course, when Cindy offered to help scour the thrift shops for more nautical-inspired separates. It’s always a treat when your clients play an active role in the behind-the-scenes work, instead of just sitting pretty and watching you do all of it!
I must confess, though, that although I had fun assembling the outfits, it was sourcing the props and dressing up the set that I found immensely enjoyable. I love a shoot that gives my set decorating muscles a good old flexin’ good time! For the first set, in which I had Cindy and Anthony tinker with and show off various memorabilia from their travels/voyages (postcards, cruise ship models, etc.), I created a backdrop peppered with anchor cutouts—took me a good two days putting that whole thing together, and for a while there it caused some numbness around my fingers (imagine having to make 90 cutouts!), but it was all worth it in the end. For the swimming pool set, I wanted to have about 50 paper boats made out of yellowed pages from an old book—loved that they lent a childlike quality to the pictures! Of course, all that was me just going gimmicky with the whole thing. (This has sort of become an “unspoken rule” for all the engagement shoots that I do under the Shutterfairy brand: to insert a gimmick or two into the first couple of sets, ‘cause it helps the subjects shake off any trace of camera shyness by giving them something to keep themselves busy/entertained). In other words, I was just getting warmed up. It wasn’t until the third and fourth sets that I went real hardcore.
(“Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” yes—that was what I wanted to allude to for the third set, and so I put together a picnic setting by the edge of the dock, completed with “messages in bottles,” some books with ocean-themed titles (e.g., High Tide by Jude Deveraux), and even chocolate mallow cupcakes with nautical-themed fondant toppers (the cuppies are by my good friend Rhia de Pablo, by the way—call her at +63 [908] 301-5225 if you happen to need some custom cupcakes in your life)! And I didn’t want it to come off too stagy, so I decided against clearing out the moorings. (It would’ve been nice to move this whole setting aboard one of the yachts, but more than anything I really just wanted to stay true to lines from the aforementioned song that goes: “Sittin’ in the morning sun/ I’ll be sittin’ when the evening comes/ Watching the ships roll in/ Then I watch them roll away again.”) I was so happy with the outcome that I ended up taking some 200+ pictures of that set alone! Perfect timing, too, because it was during this set that the videographer Marlowe Guinto arrived on set to take moving pictures—imagine the look on his face when he saw we had something very telegenic waiting for him!
My absolute, absolute favorite, though, was the final (fourth) set, which involved very unusual suspects: crabs. By crabs, I mean crustaceans, of course! And how did these little creatures end up in the picture? Well, at the time of this shoot, you see, I was gaga over the ABC TV drama Revenge (not anymore now, though—isn’t the trick to stop watching when everyone else starts?), so as I was laying down my mood board I figured, why not recreate that one oh-so-stylish clambake scene from episode 11 (“Duress,” aired January 4, 2012)? I quickly snapped myself out of it, of course, after I realized that that would make us go way over budget. I began to think: what would be good alternative? something that had a clambake kind of vibe but was less swanky (besides, the champagne and all that were already to be covered by the third/picnic set)? And then it hit me: why not recreate the feel of a seafood market/crab shack? More specifically, Quality Seafood, Inc., down the Redondo Beach boardwalk, that served steamed crabs in disposable aluminum foil plates, and that used old newspapers as tablecloth? It was perfect ‘cause it was unrefined (and I mean that in a good way) and laid-back! The only challenge was we couldn’t find a crab mallet anywhere in this part of the world, but we had handheld wooden meat tenderizers that looked exactly like mallets, so there. Of course, the funnest part was when we got to eat all the crabs after we wrapped!
Goes without saying that all this kick-ass set decorating would’ve remained an aloof and distant concept had it not been for my friend Jennifer “Jenny” Hortillosa, who served as props master for this assignment, and who assisted me in the actual dressing of the sets. (You remember Jenny, right? She’s the girl who helped us design the overall look of the Glee-inspired engagement session that we did early this year, and she has since been taken under the Shutterfairy wing as official set decorator.) You won’t believe how resourceful that girl is. I give her a list of impossible stuff to source, and she knows exactly where to get them! And whatever she can’t find, you can count on it she’s gonna make it herself! She also loves taking me to obscure shops, and just about any store that I didn’t know existed! And extra diligent, too—for this shoot right here she woke up at 3AM, to make sure she got to the seafood market before 3:30 in order to get first dibs on he fattest, juiciest mud crabs (I wouldn’t have done it)! My favorite thing about her, though, is her sunny disposition—just ‘cause, as some of you might know, that’s something I have very little of. On set she’s always making us laugh, and she’s always keeping my temper in check. Said differently, she’s the singing bluebird that hangs my laundry. I don’t say this enough, but thank you, Jenny, for being in this with me!
Going back to Cindy and Anthony, I just loved their chemistry on the day of the shoot. There was no need for us to tell them it was time for a kiss, or a hug, or a really tight embrace—they were always doing these things, even during breaks between sets! At first Cindy was a little stiff in front of the camera, but with her fiancé constantly sweet-talking her and telling jokes to make her laugh out loud it was impossible for her not to shake the nerves off. Perhaps it had something to do with them being apart from each other for a long time—this was their first time to be back in each other’s arms after months (Cindy had had to get off the cruise ship first so she could fly home and straighten out all the wedding details). Or, maybe this was just how they were to each other, every single day that they were together!
They would tie the knot three weeks after this shoot. I couldn’t be at the wedding ‘cause I had to leave for California, but I heard it was charming, especially the part when it was time for Anthony to give his thank you speech, and he won everyone over with his gift of gab. (I’m beginning to think that maybe it’s a seafarer thing? All of my friends who work for ships and cruise liners are such sweet-talkers, they debunk the old idiom “swear like a sailor!”) The theme wasn’t nautical, but that’s alright—I mean, we don’t want anyone beating me to my “fantasy wedding,” now, do we? LOL.
Thank you, Cindy and Anthony, for allowing us to capture the prologue to your new beginning together, and for making us part of a very special time in your lives. I hear one of you is back in the cruise ship, while the other has opted to stay behind in order to build a new home. I can’t even begin to imagine the irony of it all: how the very seas that brought you together have now become the distance that is to keep you apart for long periods of time. But I hope that looking at these photos will help warm your nights until the day you find yourselves back in each other’s arms again!
Anthony Joseph Haw and Cindy Hermosisima | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon for Shutterfairy in Liloan, Cebu, on April 15, 2012 | Main photographer: Malou Pages for Shutterfairy | Hair and makeup by JingJing F. Manching | Set decorator: Angelo Kangleon | Props master and assistant set decorator: Jennifer Hortillosa | Special thanks to Rhia de Pablo | Strapped wooden wedge sandals, Shandar; navy blazer with red-and-white seersucker lining, Protacio; sailor shirt, H&M; blue-and-white polka dot dress shirt, Heritage 1981, Forever 21; off-white canvas boat shoes, Generic Surplus, Urban Outfitters; soft denim roll-up pants, H&M; bucket hat, Bench
To Womb It May Concern
Always I’ve considered photographing musicians to be a big deal. Not so much because music has kind of been a huge part of my life (like I mentioned in a previous post, I was raised in a household where musicality was, for the most part, the glue when all else failed, and I also happened to play an active role—as band publicist and rock writer—when the Cebu music scene reached its peak during the late ‘90s/early 2000s), and not so much because I am a frustrated musician (yes, I did try to pick up the piano and the guitar, but they didn’t like me very much), but because most of the great photographers that I’ve admired from the start—Herb Ritts, Annie Leibovitz, et al.—have produced some of their most memorable images by collaborating with musical artists. So imagine my excitement when I was commissioned to do this band’s photos! And for their debut album cover, no less! Of course, I foamed at the mouth a little—OK, a lot—when the folks at 22 Tango Records, with whom this band is signed to, announced that they were signing me up for this project. It was all sorts of emotions rushing through my veins, like I was about to be reunited with a long-lost friend, or like I was about to get a new tattoo! I mean, things like this don’t happen to me everyday—or at all to some people! Finally, here was my chance to tick one off my list of dream projects!
Although this was my first time to photograph a band, this wasn’t my first time to work in a photo shoot that involved musicians. Back in the day I’d used to do tag along with the now-defunct Glitch to the shoots for most of their magazine appearances following their signing to OctoArts EMI. Some five years ago I’d helped style Urbandub bassist Lalay Lim for the album cover shoot for the band’s fourth album Under Southern Lights (EMI Philippines). And then just a little over a year ago I’d styled—and shot, as “second shooter” to my mentor Malou Pages—singer-songwriter Cattski for the album cover of her latest release 0:00:00. It was being exposed to these kinds of assignments that had left an impression in my creative psyche, and that had showed me that there was a certain quality to doing portraits for musicians that you just didn’t get when you were photographing regular, non-musical folk, or even models (to me one exception would be Ford Models Supermodel of the World-Philippines 2001 titleholder Marjay Ramirez, of course, because that girl is just a rock star in her own right). “It’s all about charisma,” an ex-DJ friend had told me at one point, “that one thing that, even when they’re just standing there, makes everything else around them freeze in time.” And for the longest time that became one of my favorite stories to tell: how, during the aforementioned Urbandub shoot, we’d picked an unexceptional location—just a prosaic patch of arid land in the North Reclamation area, a few steps from where they’d begun erecting the new Cebu Doctors’ University—and how the props had looked unimpressive—just a dusty old leather couch that had presumably been snatched from Lalay’s father’s office—but once the band had stepped into photographer Charles Buenconsejo’s frame the whole scenery just…transformed. “That’s the thing about musicians,” I would tell my friends over and over again, “they have this certain air about them that just takes over, and then commands the picture.”
Funny thing then that when I began work on this project I seemed to forget about that whole “charisma” thing and ended up burying myself neck-deep in preparations for the concept, locations and the props. Perhaps it was anxiety in my part, knowing I had to do a damn good job because (1) this was my first solo photography project that involved musicians, and (2) I needed to redeem myself in the eyes of these people because when I’d been commissioned to do the photos of another 22 Tango Records artist (Undercover Grasshoppers) a couple of months back that had turned out to be, in Facebook parlance, an “epic fail” (i.e., it never materialized). I think that, in the four weeks that I was given to prepare for this whole thing, only 20 or 30 percent of that time was spent talking to the band, and the other 70 or 80 percent was spent overthinking the concept!
The band is called Womb, and the music that they make is predominantly trip hop/folktronica/experimental rock—this in itself contributed to my urge to devise a crack concept, because I figured, hey, not a lot of artists in this part of the world were doing this kind of sound, so I better come up with images that would further set them apart from their peers. The overthinking officially set in after they told me they were baptizing their album Anesthesiac, and my first reaction was, “How very clinical!” I proceeded to ruminate, What is it with trip hop/electronica and its affinity to the clinical/medical? My immediate case in point: Massive Attack’s 1998 hit “Teardrop” as backdrop to the anatomy-themed opening sequence of the Fox medical drama House, M.D. I thought to myself, I have to come up with something as clever as that!
I became so relentless in my quest for the textbook clinical/medical theme that I ended up spending two full weeks going around town and pulling some old strings, ringing my friends from college (yes, I went to med school) and every single doctor I knew to see if the hospitals they worked in would allow me to borrow a couple of old gurneys that were no longer being used, or even an ambulance truck. I even mooched a couple of straitjacket-looking garments off a friend who was into that kind of stuff (did you know there’s a local clothing brand called Mental who actually makes these kinds of clothes?). This was the sick scenery that I was beginning to paint in my head, you see: three dilapidated, rusty gurneys, one for each band member, smack in the middle of a grassy field that’s dry as bone, and the band in straitjackets, with spaced-out looks in their faces. Alas, it turned out I was in for not just a bumpy ride, but for a fruitless crusade as well: my liaisons told me that none of the hospitals were willing to grant me the use of their old gurneys, not even the ones that were begging to be thrown to the junk shop! They also were not willing to lend us an ambulance truck! I wondered if it had something to do with medical ethics in the general sense, kind of like how, as I was told my by friends who are nurses, you were not allowed to use a nurse’s uniform for a conceptual shoot, even if didn’t involve any sleaze (exactly the reason why, for the Pearl Harbor-inspired engagement shoot that we did back in June, we decided to shelve the 1950s nurse costume that we’d had made in Manila).
When it became painfully clear that I was never going to get the straitjacket-and-gurney diorama that I wanted, and we had less than two weeks left until the actual shoot date, I decided to just roll with the punches and reach into my back pocket for Plan B. And that’s how we came up with all that you see right here. No gurneys? Fine! Give me a hotel room and a hotel bed! Luckily, a close friend of the producer was set to throw a little hotel room party over at the old Montebello Villa Hotel down Banilad, and she said we could have the place to ourselves the morning after. We did three sets at the hotel. It was my way of playing safe—you know, just in case the first and the second didn’t work then we still had a third one to fall back on. Everything that we did in that cramped 250-square-foot space could be summarized as an alchemy of influences and interpretations. The set where I had them don white bathrobes and order room service breakfast, that was me thinking of the lines “And in the morning/ I render numb the tongue that asks for an encore” from their song “Aftertaste,” and taking a cue from that circa 1975 Annie Leibovitz photograph of an emaciated, bathrobe-clad Mick Jagger in a Buffalo, NY, hotel elevator. The set where I had them fool around with party hats, party blowouts, some confetti, and a bottle of Scotch, a projection of my fascination with the whole hotel room trashing thing (except we had to go easy on the trashing part, because we were only borrowing the room, remember?); and the part where I had the frontwoman Chai Fonacier wear a Mickey Mouse hat (and old one of mine from one of my trips to Anaheim Disneyland, and I just wrapped the ears in sequined fabric to make it look a bit outré) was inspired by that 1987 Herb Ritts photograph of Madonna wearing Mickey Mouse ears (shot in Tokyo). Finally, the set where I had Chai show a little skin was inspired by another song of theirs called, well, “Skin,” that goes: “Shadows playing on skin/ the closest to a touch/ A fleeting glance; a fading epitaph/ Your skin: the graveyard of desire.” (Perfect, too, that Chai had just gotten a brand spanking new tattoo on her upper back!) Oh, and if all the hotel room photos have kind of a ménages à trois vibe to them, that might have been because I wanted to allude to a line from another song of theirs, “30th and 1st,” that goes: “I understand the mechanisms of a triangle.”
It all turned out alright after all. You see, while I was taking the first few shots my mind wasn’t completely in the right there and then, as all I could think of was the straitjacket-and-gurney scene that I had originally envisioned. But, boy, were the band ever their element! Whether or not they felt good about the setup(s), they didn’t show it, or that didn’t matter to them—what mattered was that they felt good about themselves, and that was what they wanted to come through in the pictures. They were professional in a way that none of us—not even their producers—had ever seen before. And that’s how the pictures turned out pretty decent, even though the person behind the camera—A.K.A. me—was kind of apathetic about the whole thing. It was only upon seeing how the band behaved in front of the camera that I was reminded of the “charisma” factor—I realized that I’d only been wasting my time and energy stressing about the concept, the locations and the props, when all of it could’ve been trouble-free had I just remembered to consider that factor. That was when I made a mental note: Next time, when photographing musicians, try not to be distracted by the complicated that you end up losing sight of the comfortable. Look past the surface, like album titles, and talk to them about what they want. Finally, once they’re in front of your camera, learn to just let go—of preconceptions and premeditations—and just allow them and their personas to transcend the context and the picture.
Actually, it kind of worked to my advantage that the whole straitjacket-and-gurney thing didn’t materialize, because shelving the, um, psychiatric ward connotations only made room for me to beef up the styling aspect and pursue a few previously untapped resources. Classic case of how a lost cause can have a strange way of turning into a golden opportunity! For the guys (instrumentalists Anthony Uy and Fender Figuera) I looked to Urban Outfitters’ early fall 2010 catalog for inspiration, as well as various Barneys CO-OP catalogs (spring/summer 2009 and spring 2011; yes, I have a weird habit of collecting catalogs). For Chai, I allowed her one grungy outfit, and that’s it, because for majority of the pictures I wanted to portray her as an ingénue by having her slip into girly—albeit not necessarily dainty—cocktail threads from up-and-coming young designer Paco Serafica. People tried to sway me from taking this route, pointing out that Chai was a no-fuss, gamine kind of girl. Trust me, I wanted to respect that, but I felt it was my duty to highlight her being the only female in an otherwise all-male collective! Plus, although she technically wasn’t new to the scene, having been around doing vocals for another band called Mary Peril (formerly known as Balde ni Allan), this album with Womb was to represent her first major breakthrough, and so what better way to celebrate that than by giving her a debutante-like image, right? Also, they could’ve fooled me about the gamine part—anyone who samples/references the Madame de Pompadour in their songwriting (in “Aftertaste” she croons in her velveteen voice, “At sunrise as you asked to be excused:/ Après nous, le Déluge”) is more vixen than gamine in my book.
I feel like I should take the time out to talk about the night shots wherein I had them stand against a fiercely burning flame, because those are the ones that have been getting a lot of positive feedback ever since I put out the sneak peek some eight weeks ago. I can tell you now that that set was inspired by the music video of Hole’s “Malibu” from 1998 (directed by Paul Hunter), in which they set fire to a lot of stuff, including precious palm trees. I was also taking a cue from their own song “30th and 1st,” in which Chai sings, “Moments rain like ember/ What this love is made of.” Although the resulting photos look straightforward, that set was actually the trickiest of all. You see, the original plan was to have them stand in front of three strips of white cloth doused in lighter fluid, suspended from a 10-foot-high clothesline. As luck would have it, that plan turned out to be, again, in Facebook parlace, an “epic fail’—I tossed a lighter at the thing, and immediately a fire was ablaze, but only to fizzle out two or three seconds later, before I could make my way back to the tripod where my camera sat waiting! Didn’t see that coming! We were all taken aback. Thankfully, 22 Tango’s April Ordesta was quick to suggest, “Why don’t we just build a campfire?” It started to rain hard, too, in the middle of it all, but we were already on a roll, and there was no stopping us now. Everyone on set started singing the chorus of Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain”—although in my head I was signing a different tune: “Fire in the Pouring Rain” by the Blackouts (2004)—and that’s how we got the job done. Fun times, I know!
On the subject of fires that fizzle out and the resilience that makes us bounce back in the game, I was just reading my prized copy of Annie Leibovitz’s At Work (a present from a friend in D.C.—thanks, Irene!) last week, and I stumbled upon her account of the work they put into the photo on the cover of the July 27, 1978, issue of Rolling Stone—Patti Smith standing in front of barrels of flame. Annie told the story of how the initial plan had been to photograph the punk star “in front of a huge wall of flame,” and so they’d “strung up a net soaked in kerosene” behind her, and then set fire to it—alas, that flame had only “lasted for about five seconds.” Eventually they’d decided to set fire to the barrels of kerosene themselves, and that was how they’d gotten their picture. Wasn’t that the exact same thing that happened to us? I couldn’t help but get goosebumps at the parallelism of it all. A year ago when I’d done work for Cattski’s album, Patti Smith had been the central inspiration, and that had all been deliberate. This time around, for this shoot right here, I hadn’t even considered Ms. Smith, but still she found a way to sneak through the back door. God bless the godmother of punk, and may her fire never cease to burn!
Womb is dropping their debut single “Good” today (December 8 Manila time). If you’re in town, and you want to show some love, it’s at Harold’s Hotel down Gorordo and Rosal, and the show starts at 930 PM. I know some of you have kind of lost faith in Cebu music, but trust me when I say this band has got what it takes to make us all believers again! As for me, I’m not styling them tonight, but I will be during the official album launch early next year—and that’s another thing to look forward to!
Charisse “Chai” Fonacier, Anthony Uy and Fender Figuera, collectively known as Womb | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon in Cebu City, Cebu, on September 30, 2012 | Makeup by Justine Gloria | Hair by Sherwin Amodia | Lighting director: Marlowe Guinto | Sittings assistant: April Ordesta | On Chai: Black semi-sheer stripe chiffon corset minidress, Paco Serafica; scarlet leatherette-and-lace minidress with recycled plastic cup skirt in overlapping scale-like pattern, Paco Serafica; black mesh skirt, stylist’s own | On Anthony: Flannel shirt, Heritage 1981, Forever 21; black biker jacket, Zara Man; eggshell silk skinny tie, Springfield UP by Springfield; 8-eyelet 1460 Dr. Martens boots in cherry red, his own | On Fender: Black-and-white gingham dress shirt, Divided by H&M; black sleeveless tuxedo jacket, Protacio; black-and-white striped cotton/silk blend skinny tie, Urban Outfitters; “Misfits” acid wash denim vest, stylist’s own; grey micro fleece hoodie, Uniqlo Undercover by Jun Takahashi; black workboots, Topman; black faux plug earrings, Santee Alley (downtown L.A.)
Let’s Make Beautiful Music: Carter and Pauline
My obsession with and specialty in grunge have been made very clear several times via this blog, along with my decent command in nautical, cowboy/western, and even 1940s styling, so I think it’s high time that we talk about what I’m not very good at, right? OK, full disclosure now: Going east isn’t, has never been, and I guess will never be my strong suit. By going east I mean Orientalia, Japonisme, Chinoiserie, and all that good stuff, collectively. Not that I dislike it; I’m just not that very well-versed when it comes to it (I’m the kind of person that likes to keep chopsticks around the house just so I could have a little aid for when I’m having a nasty craving for Cheetos and I don’t want to end up with Cheeto fingers). Which is why I almost, almost said no to this assignment. When this couple first contacted us, you see, they expressed that they wanted a theme inspired by the Hong Kong sci-fi/drama/fantasy film 2046 (from 2004) for their engagement photos. Immediately I told by boss/mentor Malou Pages (who was going to be the main photographer) that, “I swear, if you’re gonna let me touch this, it’s going to be a huge mess,” explaining that this was something I’d never done before. Not to say I didn’t try, though: I buried my nose in the spread that Mario Testino and Karlie Kloss did in China for the September 2011 issue of Vogue; stared fanatically at the same magazine’s November 2011 cover featuring actress Rooney Mara wearing a very The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo black Ralph Lauren gala gown (with a Chinese dragon embroidered on the back, from A/W 2011); even made a note in my planner to call designer Philip Rodriguez’s atelier to see if they still had Chinoiserie-inspired pieces from his past collections that I could borrow. But even with all these research efforts and pre-legwork I was still nervous as hell. Didn’t help quell my nerves learning that Pauline Demano, the bride-to-be, was a lawyer by profession—I was, like, what, was she going to litigate the living daylights out of me if I ended up not getting this whole thing right? For the first time in a long time, I actually prayed for a miracle.
And a miracle was what I got a couple of days later, in the shape of “an intervention” from Pauline’s close friends! Swear to God, I don’t know any of these people, much less have any of their numbers, but one of them must be psychic or something, because she read my mind! So they got together, and they all convinced Pauline that while her desired theme was nice, it would be best if they pursued a funner, more lighthearted kind of theme. Don’t ask me how they defeated the seemingly combative young lawyer in this debate, but they did it! Not that Pauline wasn’t happy about this, though. When we met with her the morning after her date with her friends, she was smiling from ear to ear. “So we’re changing things up a little bit,” she said rather cheerfully as she handed us a bunch of homemade cookies. She then proceeded to declare that she was kissing the 2046-inspired theme goodbye, and that they had decided to go for a “schoolboy/schoolgirl” or “high school love” theme instead! In my mind I was, like, Hallelujah!
But though this development got me all excited, it posed one minor concern. You see, the “schoolboy/schoolgirl” or “high school love” theme, although without a doubt cutesy, wasn’t exactly something you’d call profoundly original—i.e., it had been played out one too many times by so many different couples and so many different photographers. I advised Pauline that, in order for this to work, another element had to be added to the mix, something that was going to make her—them!—stand out. Initially I toyed with the idea of skate culture: high school + skate = how very Fast Times at Ridgemont High, right? Vans checkered slip-ons on my mind! Or, if you’re too young for that tuff, how about the other Amy Heckerling movie: surely you can recall Clueless’s Travis Birkenstock (Breckin Meyer) and Tai Frasier (Brittany Murphy)? I even considered exploring the rebel theme: high school + rebel = how very Heathers from 1988, right? Ultimately I had to scratch those two, especially upon realizing Pauline’s groom-to-be Carter Gothong didn’t exactly fit the Jeff Spicoli/Travis Birkenstock or the Jason Dean profiles to a tee—he was too boyish! Not a complete shame, though, because that only led us to the third item in my list, which was music. And high school + music = how very Glee, right? Obviously it turned out to be the more sensible choice, because don’t love and music always go hand-in-hand? To rethink a line from a 1983 power ballad by Journey, “Love and music, ain’t that always what it’s supposed to be?” (Coincidentally that ballad happened to be one of the classics that gained resurgence after being picked up by Fox TV series.) Another thing that made it perfect was that Carter had a kind of Mike Chang (Harry Shum, Jr.’s character) vibe about him! Pauline admitted that, although she had never been a fan of Glee, she was willing to give it a shot, for the sake of cultural reference, and for the sake of shaking things up. I assured her she wasn’t going to regret this decision!
Like Pauline, I’m not a huge fan of Glee myself (well, I was for a while there, but then life got in the way), so I knew from the start I was going to be needing an extra pair of hands in order to make this work. Luckily I had to look no further, as I happened to know someone who was the ultimate “Gleek” (as these die-hard fans of the show liked to refer to themselves)! Seriously, I don’t think I’ve met anyone as obsessed with Glee as my good friend Jennifer “Jenny” Hortillosa is—there was a time there that the only Websites/blogsites she visited/bookmarked were Glee fan sites, and that the only people she followed on Twitter were Lea Michele, Dianna Agron et al., and that the only music that blasted from her player were those from the show! Even her profile pictures on Facebook and Twitter showed her doing the loser hand gesture (which has since become a symbol for Glee, along with slushies and dodgeballs)! As it happened, she was an aspiring set decorator/props master, too, and had expressed to me a number of times in the past that it was her dream to do set decoration/props for an engagement shoot one day. When I told her about this project, I proposed that, you know, this was the perfect opportunity for her to put all that Glee fanaticism to good use, and at the same time try her hand at set decoration/props! The premise was simple: take her Glee expertise, and translate them into an overall look for Pauline and Carter’s engagement shoot. She took me up on my offer and jumped right into the project at the drop of a hat, and in less than 24 hours she handed me her scene ideas and list of props! I’d never worked with anyone who was this quick on the trigger!
Truth is, Jenny did more than set decoration and props for this shoot. She also helped me a great deal with the storyboarding, and acted as consultant with respect to the styling. It was her who narrowed down the episodes into a few key ones that she deemed to be sartorially pleasing, so there was no need for me to rewatch all 50 or so past episodes in order to decode the characters’ styles of dress! Most of Pauline’s outfits were inspired by the clothes worn by Lea Michele’s character Rachel Berry. Her outfit for the classroom set—yellow/mustard cardigan, green plaid schoolgirl skirt, black knee-high socks—was inspired by one of the ensembles that Rachel wore in episode 2 of the first season (“Showmance”), particularly that scene where they all hustled to their cover of the 1978 disco hit “Le Freak.” And the blue polka dot dress that I slipped her into for the drummer set was inspired by, well, various blue polka dot dresses that Rachel liked to wear throughout the show (episode 2 of the second season, particularly that scene 30 minutes into the thing where she visits Finn Hudson [Cory Monteith’s character] in the boys’ locker room; episode 14 of the third season, opening scene, coffee shop). The multicolor argyle sweater with a Peter Pan collar that I made her wear for the violin/school bus set looked like something Jayma Mays’s character Emma Pillsbury would wear. Of course, the William McKinley High School (WMHS) cheerleader uniform had to be in the picture, too, and to make sure of that I worked pretty damn hard to obtain a replica—no decent costume shops in this part of the world, so I had to make some 7 trips to the heart of downtown where I had two sweatshop-type establishments copy the thing (no one could get the pleated skirt right, so I settled for a plain mini, but at least they got the top right, including the WMHS lettering across the chest)! And while I was at it, I made them copy the WMHS letterman jacket, too, except instead of the letter M emblazoned across the chest I had them use Pauline and Carter’s initials. I may not be the stylist with the mostest, but don’t I go hard!
Of course, nothing makes me happier than seeing our clients happy with our work . The looks on Pauline and Carter’s faces once they saw how everything fell into place on the day of the shoot were just priceless. Pauline proceeded to call us “dreamweavers,” which was the biggest compliment I—or, us as a team—had ever gotten from a client! Naturally I made sure Jenny got all the credit, since this really was 70% or 80% the sleight of her hand. And it wasn’t just Pauline and Carter who were impressed—Malou was overawed that she wasted no time in taking Jenny under the Shutterfairy wing as resident set decorator! Exciting times!
For most of our shoots I would say that about 80% of the fun is in the planning and preparations, but for this one right here it was the actual shoot that turned out to be more enjoyable, and I’ll tell you why: This was the first time ever that we used extras in an engagement shoot! Yes, usually it’s just the couple engaged to be married that you photograph during an engagement session, but this time around I asked the couple if they were open to the idea of having a bunch of background actors, in the form of little boys and girls, to play the role of their classmates for the classroom set. This got them really excited, and they went right down to business, making a list of their little nieces and nephews whom they thought would be perfect for the scenes. Malou and Jenny were concerned that we were straying too much from tradition here, but I told them, you know, that that was exactly my point—to be able to do something that no one’s ever done before! I’d never been one to worry about getting my chops busted for trying something new before, so why hold back now? In fact my only concern was that the whole shoot might turn into a riot, but I got over that once the kids arrived on set because they turned out to be very well-behaved! I loved it when, every time we asked Pauline and Carter to kiss, the little ones would be like, “Ew! Ew! They’re kissing! Why are they kissing?” I had to explain that “It’s OK, they’re grownups, and they’re about to get married!” To which one of the little boys retorted, “Exactly! They’re about to get married! They’re not married yet! They’re not supposed to be kissing yet!” My heart just melted at the cuteness of it all.
But my absolute, absolute favorite part was how Carter seemed to transform into a completely different person once the cameras started clicking. I mean, when I’d first met him, during our sit-down meetings to go over our checklists, he’d come off as the shy, silent type, and he wouldn’t even smile! “I’m worried he’s going to look too stiff in the photos,” I’d told Pauline at one point. But that day of the shoot he was the complete opposite—he was spontaneous and hyper, and was down for whatever! Funny ‘cause it was Pauline who turned out to be camera shy, and it was Carter who would help her relax by tickling her, or by stealing kisses. Every time we asked Pauline to wrap her arms around him, he would say, “Come on, hold me! Hold me like you don’t wanna lose me!” In no time Pauline was in the mood, too! I don’t know if it was the theme—the musical instruments, the cheerleader uniform, the varsity jackets—that got them in a very “puppy love” kind of groove, but one thing is for sure: all this wouldn’t have happened had we stuck to the original 2046-inspired theme. Make beautiful music, they certainly did!
Carter Gothong and Pauline Demano | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon for Shutterfairy in Cebu City, Cebu, on March 18, 2012 | Main photographer: Malou Pages for Shutterfairy | Hair and makeup: Ramil Solis | Set decorator: Jennifer Hortillosa | Special thanks to Steve Lora of Lorapalooza Band Instruments and Audio Systems
Into the Rush: Michael and Charice
No matter how much couples engaged to be married claim to have a lot of things in common, they almost always end up in different pages when it comes to planning their engagement photos. I’ve worked with a little under twenty couples over the last two years, and that should be a reliable enough statistic, right? More often than not the fiancé wants one thing, but the fiancée has another thing in mind, and sometimes this can end up in a pretty sticky situation (although thankfully not the kind