Last Sunday

Mom at Point Reyes, CA

My mother sat on the reclining chair at the corner of the living room as I busily prepared lunch. She remained silent for a long time. On a few occasions, she got up and walked towards the kitchen to look over my shoulder. She asked about the dish I was cooking and how I prepared it. She was trying to make conversation. I kept my answers short as I knew she did not cook. "Ahh......" she answered. She headed back to the reclining chair and turned on the television. The San Francisco Giants were playing against the Oakland A's. I heard her reading the stats out loud and I was quite surprised that she was actually following the game. Since when was my mother a sports fan? I thought. She must have picked it up from my older sister who lives in Boston. Two years ago, she stayed with her for several months while waiting approval for her U.S. citizenship.

Although I didn't care much for baseball or any type of sports, I stayed with her to watch the game after lunch. Out of the corner of my eye, I would sometimes catch her stare at me. When I turned my head, she gave me a smile. I wondered what was on her mind but I did not ask. If given the opportunity, my mother could get very inquisitive and I was not in the mood for it. So, I smiled back. After awhile, she fell asleep. I stayed a little longer and felt content keeping her company. Then I started nodding off. I got up quietly, walked upstairs and took a nap.

Process II

Tito Phil's chair
From the Family Spaces series

I strive for an emotional honesty in my images. I think it is that subtle tug in the soul that draws a viewer to a picture. I focus on certain objects that relate to a personal narrative. I draw this from either my own memories and experiences or from listening to conversations that may hint on a meaning that I can relate to it. Sometimes, I just follow my instincts and I take the picture anyway. It is gratifying to know if later on, a personal story is revealed.

Zen

Hakone Gardens

Saratoga, CA

The other eye

My right eye was injured when I was about 5 years old. My older sister and I were sword fighting with straws from the Sunkist tetra pak that we were drinking while watching TV. Thankfully, it did not land on my iris or my pupil but the sclera which is the white portion of the eye. That evening, my mother brought me to the opthalmologist. He applied a few drops of medicine on my injury and covered it with gauze and bandage. I am not sure how long I had it on but when I returned for a check up, I couldn't stop squinting. Somehow, the exposure to light was hurting my eye. He decided to cover it for a longer period of time. Although it eventually healed, my right eye never regained its full strength.

Perspective

I once observed a friend work through her assignment in school. From that one session, I learned so much. She didn't fire away with her camera but she just kept walking around her set up. Sometimes, she would bend down and then later on, she would switch to stepping on an apple box. She would pause for a few moments then subtly shift from left to right, up and down. The most interesting thing she did was to go behind and look through the spaces in between the back of her subject. I can't remember exactly what she said but it was something like "you should always look at the opposite of what your first instincts tell you. Sometimes, it'll surprise you--"

Garage Sale

I am not sure where this is going yet but there might be something interesting here. I took these photographs late fall of last year. Summer might be a good time to pick it up again.

Inspiration: Send A Letter by Dyanita Singh

Send a Letter: Dyanita Singh

Publisher: Steidl

Publisher's description:

Dayanita Singh has been making small photo journals of her travels in India for some years now. Each book is made with a certain person in mind, either one she has made the journey with or one that was on her mind during her travels. She makes two copies of each book by hand, one of which remains with her, and the other of which goes to the friend it was made for. A diary with coded images of a time shared. Steidl is pleased to publish seven of these small journals for the first time, along with an eighth journal of her mother, Nony Singh's, photographs of her daughter growing up. The journals are produced in accordion folds so that they can open into mini private exhibitions in her friends' homes, and come housed in a handmade wooden box.

Garden

Garden, Prague Castle

I sat there for a long time admiring the magnificent spires towering the city. A slight breeze cooled my face while I listened to the rustling leaves, the birds chirping nearby and the sound of visitors conversing as they walked along the garden path made of fine white gravel. I pulled my red notebook from my bag and began to write down my thoughts. I felt so grateful having this gift of time in my hands--no schedules to follow, just me and my camera wandering around an unfamiliar city. Then I felt a drop of water land on my head. I looked up and the faint sunlight disappeared behind the gray clouds. I let out a sigh. It was time to go. It was such a rare moment for me that I did not want it to end. I closed my notebook and stuffed it in my bag. I pulled out my camera and took this picture.

Process

To capture the right moment, I think it is always a combination of luck and a little bit of patience. Practice, of course, is the other ingredient. Whether I am with my camera or not, I am constantly looking at the interaction of lines, shapes, spaces, movements and observe how light falls in my environment. I mentally compose pictures and imagine that I am looking through a viewfinder. It is not something I force myself to do. It is a habit. The camera is only as good as the person looking behind it.

Commute

Muni Bus 38 to Transbay Terminal

from the Time Between series

I used to work an eight hour shift that ended at 9:00pm. After work, I caught the 38 bus right around the corner of 3rd and Market Street. By the time I got on, the bus was almost always empty except for a few commuters who prefer to sit closer to the back. The final stop was the Transbay Terminal. From there, I transferred to the 108 bus that took me home to Treasure Island. The commute was short but I found it soothing just staring blankly into the distance while the sound of the roaring engine drowned my worries away.

In situ

Cara's Table
Berkeley, CA

The Surfer

My jaw dropped in disbelief. He must've emerged from the water, changed from a wet suit to a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and drove straight to campus. He walked barefoot to class, his shoulder length blond hair still wet from surfing. He was an unconventional student and had trouble conforming to class assignments. He often had to re-do his work because he presented out of the box ideas rather than follow instructions. He talked the "dude" language and at the same time, he was philosophical and poetic. In fact, he was dismissed as someone who probably wouldn't make it too far in his career.

Although I thought he was a bit off, I did admire his creativity. In Design class, he constructed a box made out of cardboard. He placed it on an incline, pushed it with his finger and it unfolded to a flat surface in one motion. He also shared his philosophy and his poetry to explain his thought process behind his project. On one of our lighting classes, he chose a crumpled paper as a subject rather than a product. He showed me the polaroids and I thought they were brilliant. He once submitted a photograph of a perfect wave in the ocean but the instructor gave him a bad critique simply because it was not what the assignment called for.

Right after he finished his portfolio review before graduation, he sat down beside me in the library and confessed that the panel gave him a failing mark. He was always good natured but this time, he had a straight face. He felt dejected. I tried to cheer him up. I told him how I loved the box he did in Design class and the crumpled paper he photographed in our lighting class. "It's just that the panel's expectations are different from your creative thinking." I advised him to just do the portfolio according to what the panel wanted but to continue to do the kind of work that he loves. I assured him that there will be other people that will appreciate his images. He thanked me for the encouragement then he walked away.

For some strange reason, I recently thought about him, probably brought about the news that the Montecito campus was closing. I looked him up in the web and I am happy to say that he has proven the naysayers wrong.

First Contact Sheet

On my last visit to Manila, my father showed up in the lanai one morning carrying a huge box. "Here," he said as he plopped it on the floor. "Can you go through your old things and throw away anything that you don't need? I want to purge the storage." I nodded my head. He turned around and walked back to the house. I stared at the box for quite sometime. I wasn't prepared to revisit my past especially when it was presented to me as a task to be checked off on a to do list. Not wanting to disappoint him, I reluctantly opened the flaps of the box and saw a bunch of folders and envelopes. I grabbed a few and it turned out to be all the stuff from when I attended college at De La Salle University. Most of what I kept were test prints and multiple print versions from my school assignments. I also found several slides and color negatives stuck together from the years they were stored in humid conditions. As I rummaged through the pile, I saw a lot of terrible pictures and badly printed images. It was one of those moments when I realized how far I've come. I ended up throwing away most of its contents but kept this one contact sheet for sentimental reasons. It is the very first roll I shot, processed and printed in black and white. Like everyone else, I had to start somewhere. I just kept at it and never gave up until I discovered my full potential.

GT's ties

GT's ties, 2006
From the series, Family Spaces

While recuperating from jet lag at my brother's apartment in Prague, I noticed his neckties hanging at the foot of his bed. We had past conversations about him staying late at night in the office and often brought paperwork to finish on the weekends. I realized that the neckties, and where they were situated, revealed a story about his life. It was such a mundane detail but it made a connection with me. So, I took the picture.

Six months from now, I will be in Manila for my first solo exhibition. For those of you who are new to the blog, the work that will be featured is the project entitled, Family Spaces. The show will run from January-February 2009. More details coming soon.

Silverlens gallery (SLG) mounts 7-8 art shows a year, representing a mix of local and international artists working with photography and new media. Established in Makati City in 2004, SLG is the only museum quality art space in the Philippines. In what used to be a piano factory, the expansive 300 square meter space houses a huge main gallery, a studio and a reference library. Regular art activities such as panel discussions, artist talks, and film screenings are held in conjunction with exhibits.

Book: Sweep Out Cottage

Sweep Out Cottage by Peter C. Jones
Publisher: Nazraeli Press

This book has been living in my wish list for awhile now. As we head towards summer, I am more inclined to purchase it this season. I love this work because of its simplicity and for Peter's beautiful interpretation of a relaxing summer escape. Here is the publisher's description of the book:

Although taken over a five-year period, the photographs in Sweep Out Cottage timelessly evoke one single summer’s day in Little Compton, Rhode Island. Here, with the wistful sense of an earlier era, is evidence of two people who love the simple things in life: gardening, reading, eating and drinking in their beautiful holiday surroundings. For some years now Peter Jones and his wife have rented the sweep out cottage every July, and in this quiet colonial hamlet they have realized a dream of summer as it should be, with the breeze off the water, the fragrance of flowers and soft fruit, a good book, a favorite chair, and the breakfast table set for another idyllic day. Jones has been involved with many aspects of photography all his adult life, but it is here in Sweep Out Cottage that he has found his own true artistic inspiration. The work in this, his first monograph, is not only a celebration of a place and a way of life; it is also an homage to a happy marriage and a time of blissful serenity. Beautifully printed on Japanese matt art stock, Sweep Out Cottage opens with an essay by Michael Shnayerson.

This week

It was a tough week at work-- long hours and never ending emails to reply to. I would leave my inbox clean at the end of the day only to find 50+ plus messages waiting for me the following morning. Furthermore, I received a barrage of phone calls and voicemail messages all clamoring for my attention to resolve their issues as soon as possible. In this world of electronic communication, everything is urgent. Sometimes, people fail to understand that there is still a human being responding to these messages even if the medium of communication offers instant gratification.

Keeping things in perspective, T sent me a blog entry by John Maeda, the newly appointed President of Rhode Island School of Design.

He writes, "I also impart upon them the advice one of my Professors gave to me twenty years ago when he saw me in a state of distress and said, “All that happens to you now, you will have forgotten in ten years.” Moral of the story is to always look to the future and the present can always be endured."

I was simply amazed that my stress level dissipated as soon as I changed my thought process. Combining this with moments of silence in a quiet church just around the corner from work, I was able to get through the week.

Baras

Magallanes Park, Makati.

When I was a kid, I loved playing the baras (bar in English ) in the park located around the corner from where I lived in Manila. Every afternoon, I attempted to climb it, carefully taking a step or two until I overcame my fear. I remember lingering on the fourth rail for a very long time. Crossing the next ones were overwhelming especially when I looked down at the steep drop ahead. Weeks passed and I haven't moved. One day, I finally found the courage to take the next steps. It was an exhilarating feeling to reach the top. I sat there, my legs dangling in the air, watching the other kids play down below.

Then I found another challenge.

I wanted to move from one bar to the other using my arms. That got me into trouble. When I exerted too much, I came down with a fever the following day. My mother then sent me to a manghihilot, a native healer that specializes in techniques and treatments for sprains and muskoskeltal conditions. He covered my skin with coconut oil, felt the sprained areas with his fingers and strategically cracked my limbs. Miraculously, my fever disappeared soon after the visit.

When I first saw this image on the contact sheet , I was unhappy with the color. The baras was painted red and yellow stripes which did not exude the feeling I wanted. I remembered it to be green. Disgusted, I threw it in a box under my desk. While searching for another picture a year or so later , I saw this again. With fresh eyes, I scanned the contact sheet and decided to convert the image from color to black and white. What a difference it made! Feelings of nostalgia rushed through me. The image now carried the emotions that was missing when I first viewed it.

Gas prices

Long's Pharmacy at Lakeshore Blvd, Oakland. 2005

I took this picture three years ago. I noticed the gas prices on the left side of the frame and thought it was a good photograph to post. This morning, the station across the street from where I live was selling regular gas at $4.45/gallon. Ouch!

The Family as Photographic Subjects

These projects have inspired and kept me going on my own work.

Tete a Tete: Intimate Portraits of Adolescent Sons by Martine Fourgeron
Interior Exposure by Jessica Todd Harper
Expectations of Adolescence by Blake Fitch
Life is a Series of Small Moments by Elizabeth Flemming
Domestic Vacations by Julie Blackmon (her earlier work, Mind Games is a personal favorite)
The Brown Sisters by Nicholas Nixon
Other Family Traditions by Jessamyn Lovell
The Lams of Ludlow Street by Thomas Holton

I also follow Timothy Archibald's blog T.A. where he works collaboratively with his son. Here is one heartfelt entry. He recently started another blog to showcase these images entitled Work in Progress.

Second look

Hotel Vitale, San Francisco

I almost tossed this picture. It was in my reject folder for three years. I found it this evening and now I am wondering why I made the decision to edit it. Sometimes, I just need the distance away from the moment I actually made the picture so that I can come back and appreciate it. It is definitely growing on me.