According to my college professor, “art is anything made or done by man that affects or moves us so that we feel and see beauty in it.” I have never forgotten that definition since then. That was some 40 years ago! When an architect designs and builds a structure, he is actually expressing himself or his artistic side through the design and making of buildings. It is a product of his artistic mind. Painting, sculpture, music, interior design, architecture and photography are all art expressions too. Oftentimes, the artist is trying to convey a message, to tell something, or express his inner thoughts and feelings through his artwork.

Love for Architecture

I think that it was in my first year in high school that I first began to be interested in architecture. One of the teachers — I think it was in a vocational class — gave us an overview of what architectural drawings were and how to understand those drawings. He even gave the class an assignment to draw a basic floor plan, a front elevation, and side elevations. That got me interested because I had an inclination on making drawings. I loved to draw during my younger years. I was more interested in art more than I enjoyed math — my Waterloo haha! That’s how it all started.

My dad brought me to both Mapua Institute of Technology as well as at the University of Santo Tomas to take their entrance exams and I passed in both schools. But I decided to enrol at UST because I dreaded Math haha! Also, I thought that Architecture was all about drawings. I was wrong! We had Math subjects all the way up to fifth year!

Love for Photography

It was during my college days that I began to get interested in photography as I began to be exposed to a lot of photographic art work in school at the UST – College of Architecture & Fine Arts for about 6 or 7 years. I was an irregular student. I began working as an architectural draftsman when I was in fourth year college. But then I had no camera. It was beyond my financial reach. And so it was just an interest, something to dream and think about. But I did begin to learn about photography bit by bit over the years.

Art Expression

And so, what do you get when you combine architecture and photography together? Well, I don’t just shoot beautiful faces, places, nature and flowers, I photoshoot beautiful buildings too haha! Here’s a nice chapel that attracted my attention the other day. It’s the Sanctuario de San Fernando Chapel in San Fernando, Pampanga. My wife and I go there at that memorial park for exercise every morning. But I do get distracted because I stop and photoshoot often haha!

Back in May 2007, I was invited as one of the staff in a youth summer camp that was held in Cebu. I didn’t realize that it was near Kawasan Falls, a beautiful resort area where tourists visit. From the camp site beside the beach, we had to hike about 45 minutes or so to reach Kawasan Falls with its many falls along the way as you go up higher. Yes, that’s right! It’s all going up—high up in the mountains! Whew! That was tough for me haha! I was not expecting the hike to take that long with my old heavy laptop in my backpack! Anyway, I survived haha!

Here are the shots I took using my point-and-shoot Mercury digital camera. In the photo above, I took that shot because I thought that it’s an example of Philippine folk architecture. The rest are shots I took along the way.

I’ve been dreaming to have a professional camera ever since but since I could not afford it, I used whatever was available to me back then. I happened to have been given a cell phone called, Vodaphone V902T made by Toshiba and I used it too to take photographs. Cell phone photos are just great for me too haha! Here are three snapshots from this phone which I took when I was at Kawasan Falls, in Cebu sometime in 2007.

I also took more photos at Kawasan Falls using my Mercury digital camera. Click here.