I remember the pre-production meeting we had for this shoot. Toby’s Estate had a pop up in Whitespace, and in one of the tables were Pam Quinones, Patrick Galang, Patrick Diokno, and myself. Our upcoming fashion editorial was going to deal with very special ingredients: the beautiful pieces of Ricky Toledo & Chito Vijandre, at the high valued Leon Gallery, which at that time was carrying the paintings of the 19th century masters such as Juan Luna and Fabian de la Rosa. Aside from the obvious thorough briefing we had to go through to make sure we would not compromise any of the pieces (such as not using modeling lamps or being very careful with the equipment), the production had to be precise—lighting, framing, editing, styling, makeup and hair had to be aligned. On my end, Pam had only one simple peg for me to be inspired by: Paolo Roversi.

The naive 2016 version of myself went through that meeting with the best poker face I could deliver, acting like I understood the visual pegs. Truth be told, I had no idea who Roversi was. This was one of those milestone moments in my career—accepting that I would only be recognized with respect in the industry if I knew my shit, all throughout. I remember being an irresponsible young adult as I left that meeting and went home, driving and Googling everything Paolo Roversi at every stop light. With my knowledge and technique in the craft back then, I knew there was no way I could achieve a semblance of a Roversi image. But I had to deliver the best way I could, with the tools I knew how to work with.

With superstar team of David Milan, Patrick Galang, Ethan David, Anthea Bueno, and Patrick Diokno, every layout was treated like a painting. For this particular shot, I had my main light mounted with an octabox, pointing at the space between the model and I, angled downwards. I wanted to achieve the same atmosphere Roversi extracted from his muses, but light it up in reference to the paintings I was seeing in the space. Another light with a stripbox was set on the ground, with a warm gel to give off this “fire place” feel.

For this other layout, I worked with a single studio light. To maintain the continuity for the lighting peg, my main light still had an octabox, and was kept at the same height and angle. We positioned it by the wall, and pointed it towards me to avoid any burn spots on the part of the wall nearest the light. To give this photo a more dimensional perspective, we partly opened up the curtain behind her to reveal the back room, where there was a chandelier. In order to absorb the ambient light from the chandelier, all other lights in the area had to be turned off. I pushed my shutter speed down to 1/25, where it was enough to absorb enough light, and even welcome a bit of motion blur/camera shake. The reason why the model and everything else my studio light hit stayed crisp despite the shutter speed is because a studio light pops only at the time your shutter clicks—my subject could move as much as she wanted to, but if the light only flashed for a moment in time, the camera would only absorb that singular moment. If other ambient light sources were on, or if the studio light was a modeling light, the results would be very different.

Looking back at this shoot, I know I could have done better—my lack of culture in photography as well as conservative way of thinking limited me in achieving more iconic and compelling images. But despite that, this shoot is still one of my all time favorite projects.