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.