June 2016—got myself a birthday gift of a Sony A7rii, with no other reason than the conceited idea that it was “r2”, I guess with the small perk that it was THE BEST CAMERA IN THE MARKET AT THAT TIME. This was the 78th photo I had taken, moments after I unboxed the camera.

Gab de Leon was my constant test subject as we went through AB-Photography in CSB, and continued to be so in the years that followed. With his calling of becoming an actor, we had a pretty solid space to understand and elevate our standards in lighting and direction.

This was my safety blanket lighting setup for male subjects with facial hair—a softbox positioned high and angled down to my subject, at around 8 o’clock from him. I had a white board right by Gab’s stomach, angled slightly towards him to catch light for the lower part of his pupil.

One of the many daily things I’d do to train myself with lighting was see the reflections of light in the eyes of models in fashion campaigns. I would often go to the mall and look at the store front photos, and dissect the lighting through the reflections on either the eyes or the sunglasses. This is something photographer Walid Azami recently discussed on his Instagram. 

In a Broncolor workshop with photographer Urs Recher back in 2019, he discussed how the reflection of lights on the sclera (white part of the eye) was something he personally did not like seeing, and would have a stronger impact if only seen on the iris. Since then, I’ve gotten somewhat allergic of it myself, but the calculations to achieve this has made setting up much more fractional than before.

Going back to this photo of mine in 2016, I wish I knew better.