Macvinced

During my final year as a chemical engineering student, I took up Humanities 1. Yes, it's that subject where you have to pretend you do not know anything about the humanities because you do not want to spoil your teacher's enthusiasm to actually teach you something you already know.  It was nothing new, nothing that I haven't read somewhere or heard about countless times. But it made me ask a simple question: 

What do you do with Iligan City?

Hah. After some time, I figured out an answer: Photograph it.

But first I had to complete a checklist. I needed interesting subjects and a good camera. There was no problem with thinking about good spots to photograph. (Oh please it's not because Iligan City overflows with those, but because of simple narcissism: everything I think interesting is, to me, really interesting.) The minor dilemma was obtaining a good camera. With that I mean a dSLR. I have a friend who owns one but it spawned a new problem. I do not know how such a camera works. Poor me. By some unexplained force of inexplicable origin, (thru the efforts of my friend, the Renaissance painter) I actually got not just a camera but  a photographer as well. Think about it. For my humanities project, I get to tag along a photographer.

So with everything all up, we toured the city proper taking pictures when I feel like telling him to. I felt like a director, pointing here and there, explaining where the best angles would be and what subjects display the drama of the life of an Iliganon. Except that most of his shots were his ideas. ( Manaka-naka lang ang sa akin, anoobaa!)

In reality, I looked like his personal assistant. I, dressed like a troglodyte, tagged along by the photographer looking so preppy with walkshorts, fitting shirt and Sanuks, with the dSLR hanging on his neck as if not to burden him of his task but to accentuate the look of a "journalist" from the metro. And when he's not futzing with the camera, the Ray Ban gave him a look of a tourist prowling the streets of a strange land. That's probably why people keep asking if we are reporters. I mean, they asked that to me. What they asked him was when his next teleserye would be airing.

I tried hanging the camera on my neck, hoping that I would exude the same look. But it just won't. How frustrating.

Rarely do I accept dissolving in the background, much more as a P.A., but the evidence was unarguable. Plus, I cannot spoil his look (in addition to being a camera no-brainer) so I dare not took it from him. We went to the bustling streets of Iligan City, to the Pala-o public market and to St. Michael's Cathedral. The streets were teeming with interesting subjects. Equally of interest was the everyday life of people in the public market and well, the cathedral was perfect for pictures in time of the feast of the Black Nazarene.

Since I was ironically just tagged along, I spent the time observing what he'd do. At the market, he pointed the camera to a Moslem woman brewing coffee, adjusted the focus, zoomed in and out as much as he desired, and with a click, the woman brewing what seemed like delicious, native coffee, was macvinced. 

These kids who are in the talipapa most of their lives, with that camera-shy giggle, turning to each other for cover, afraid that their realness would be captured by the camera, something they haven't had the luxury of thanks to their meager life,  were macvinced.

Outside the church, he sat on the bench, casually talked to the woman selling Black Nazarene necklaces, asked her why they were around, arched a little and did the same: point, adjust, shoot. There was something very human about this photo. It was as if the essence of what she does not just for a living but also for her faith, was permanently captured on the picture. The woman, too, was macvinced.

Next, he went to the business of getting all these red candles macvinced. By that, I mean capturing on photograph an emotional response to a seemingly ordinary thing. The flame is awe-inspiring and the dripping candle is haunting, like blood from your own bleeding conscience.  

But I digress. 

I told you he was good, didn't I? For someone who always shirks compliments and says he is still learning, the pictures suggest how fast that learning proceeds. We now advise him: When you're this good, humility is an annoyance. 

Seeing apparently that you want more, these are but a few of the pictures he took during that photo walk. This blog will be featuring more of these as photo essays in later posts.

By the way, because he is my friend, and most of all because he's good, I told him I will let him photograph me for my first book. To be able to photograph me successfully, (that is, adding aesthetic value to the photo) is quite a feat. Actually,  I just like to get myself macvinced too and see if it works.

Hey, did I just coin a new adjective?  Get yourself macvinced, everyone.

All photos by Michael Vincent Mosquera.