The Way I Remember Home

I started photography sometime in the last quarter of 2011. But if I remember it correctly, 2012 was really the year when I became serious about it.

I was still a seafarer back then. I didn't go to photography school, and I didn't have someone teaching me what to do. I had my Canon Rebel T2i, a copy of Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure, and a lot of curiosity.

That book became my teacher.

I would read it whenever I had time, then try what I learned with my camera. Sometimes I understood it, sometimes I didn't. I just kept shooting.

At that time, photography was simply something I loved doing. I had no idea that years later I would leave my life at sea and make photography my profession.

But that's what happened.

Photography eventually became my work, and I've been fortunate enough to make a living from it. But there has always been another side of photography for me, the one that has nothing to do with clients, deadlines, or getting paid.

That's where Puerto Galera comes in.

Puerto Galera is home.

Whenever I had the chance to go back, I would bring my camera and photograph whatever interested me. The sea, the mountains, people, everyday life, places I had known since I was young. I wasn't following a shot list. Most of the time, I wasn't even thinking about what I would do with the photographs afterward.

I just wanted to photograph them.

Years went by and the images kept adding up.

Then one day I thought, why not put them into a book?

It was a simple idea at first. I started looking through my old photographs, some going all the way back to 2012. From there, the idea slowly became something real.

In 2022, I published Puerto Galera Through My Eyes.

Two years later, I made Gunita, which means "memories" in Filipino.

These two books are different, but they came from the same reason.

I wanted to preserve something.

Not because I thought the books would make money. Definitely not because I thought they would make me famous. If that was the goal, there were probably easier ways to promote my photography.

I'm not even very good at constantly posting my work online. Sometimes I take photographs that I really like and they just stay on my hard drive.

Maybe that's also why making a book felt right for me.

Social media moves very fast. We post something, people look at it for a few seconds, maybe leave a like or a comment, and then everyone moves on. I'm guilty of doing the same thing.

But a printed photograph doesn't ask for your attention like that.

A book can just sit there.

Years later, someone can pick it up and the photographs are still there, exactly where you left them.

I like that idea.

Puerto Galera has changed a lot since I was young, and I'm sure it will continue to change. Maybe some of the places I've photographed will look completely different someday. Some may even disappear.

At least I photographed them while they were there.

And when I look at these two books now, I don't really see them as achievements. Of course, I'm proud that I was able to make them, but they're more personal than that.

They're pieces of home that I managed to keep.

I don't know what will happen to my photographs fifty years from now. I don't know who will own these books or who will bother opening them.

Maybe my family. Maybe someone from Puerto Galera. Maybe someone I will never meet.

But if one person opens one of these books someday and becomes curious about the Puerto Galera I knew, then I think the books already did what I wanted them to do.

I was here.

This was my hometown.

And this was how I saw it.