The best shot

Uploaded in Batac March 13

March 13 – The pastoral text of Fr Reuter is this: Try to be like a good photographer. Look for the best side of everybody.

I’m right now in the City of Batac in Ilocos Norte attending a national conference on sweet sorghum and just this morning, in the hillside village of Bungon just outside the city proper during the inauguration of the village-level sweet sorghum initiative of Mariano Marcos State University (MMSU) through MMSU VP for Planning and Development Heraldo Layaoen, Crop Research Director Joy Eusebio of Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD) was sitting with her best friend Thelma Layaoen and (the girls you see in the photo) and we were talking about somebody’s best angle in a photo. We agreed that not everybody is photogenic, that some people have their best angle, their literal photogenic side.

And then Joy asked me to photograph the two of them as friends, which I did, first counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 13! before I pressed the shutter. I don’t know how to count? That’s a technique of mine, to get you to smile immediately before I press the shutter. The jump in the number is meant to upset your posing and if not smile, be your natural self. In short, that’s how I get your best shot. I always look for the best side of my subjects.

I’ve been doing that for the last 7 months at least as I myself take the photographs I use in my essays such as this one. This photo I have titled ‘Two Sisters’ because Joy said when she saw it that she was amazed at how fast I took the shot and ‘made them’ really look like sisters. The lesson? Fr Reuter has just said it; when looking for the best side of others becomes a habit, it’s good for the others as well as for you.