Shot on a Fujinon S1, my very first DSLR. I think it was a 5 megapixel camera. I super loved that camera. It was a collaboration of Fuji and Nikon. The body was a Nikon but the digital technology was that of Fuji.
I shot this photo at the break of dawn on the very last leg of the Chicago Night ride of 2006. It was a bike marathon that starts midnight and finishes around six in the morning. I did it with my high school batchmates Kevin Limas, Patrick Hilado (who was the consul of Chicago that time) and Alwayne Tulayba.
Eventually this photo won and came out in Time Out Chicago.
Summer of 2006, July, Chicago, IL.
Falling in love with a whole new genre in photography and listening to Thatcher Cook in Maine made me go home to Chicago yearning for an output. So I searched and volunteered as a photographer for 2 NGOs working with refugees from Somalia, Russia and Africa. I took a ton of photos following them through their summer programs. In hindsight, this was a real turning point for me as an artist, I think.
After 2 years of apprenticing under Lee Briones-Meily, I sold my car and moved to the U.S. to study. I settled down in Chicago gearing up to take the summer workshops in Maine, before practicing as a cinematographer.
Maine was great. Met a lot of people from around the globe. I particularly liked my classmate from Saudi Arabia who knew Filipino words and loved adobo growing up with a Filipina yaya. He loved Filipinos. I also particularly liked my classmate from England because of their humor.
Rode the bike to class. That was really nice. Mind you, I was 33 years old when I went to Maine.
But my most memorable class was a class I sat in after regular classes—Thatcher Cook’s class on documentary photography. It was packed and it was free. He was great. He opened me up to a whole different world of photography—and that changed me.