A Shutterbug's Passion for Fashion

Back in Grade School, my friends and I would always head out to Virramall and/or Shoppesville to unwind and spend what little time we had before having to face another homework-filled night. Once the bell rings, as if on cue, students would start huddling to plan where in Virramall or Shoppesville they would meet up.
Everyone called it their third home.

Our Virramall/Shoppesville itinerary usually looked something like this:
National Bookstore
Tiangge
stopover for some snacks (if we’re hungry)
Tiangge
Gift Gate
Regina’s
Tickles
That small magazine stall near Giordano
Giordano
And maybe a few more Tiangge

That third to the last trip is probably the one I enjoyed most. I ♥ magazines. Fashion ones, to be exact. When I was younger, I would always borrow my sister’s magazines (YM, Teen, Dolly, Girlfriend, et al. And yes, I went through a Teen Beat/ BOP phase as well, shamefully) and read them until I fall asleep.
I remember stumbling upon my first ever issue of InStyle back in 7th Grade when I was contemplating on spending my money on a fashion magazine I’ve never read before (and had Matthew Perry on its cover) or buying another issue of a teeny-bopper magazine whose contents were beginning to feel a little too monotonous for me.

I was debating with a friend on why I think InStyle was a much better buy than Seventeen. She wanted to see Sarah Michelle Gellar/Alicia Silverstone but this new, more mature fashion magazine really got me interested. I decided to satisfy my curiosity and was glad to know that it was, in fact, a good buy.
I have never missed an issue since then.

I added 2 more to my Must Buy List: Teen Vogue and Lucky.

It would be a dream of mine to work in a fashion magazine, and an even bigger dream to work in Teen Vogue. It’s one of my faves because I like how they photograph clothes and their models. There’s nothing blah about their photo spreads. There always is a story.

Photography. I ♥ photography. Every time we would go abroad my family would tease me about wasting film (or file space) on sceneries rather than on people. So I guess this is where 2 of my passions merge.
And thanks to Norman Jean Roy, one of my favorite photographers who I discovered while admiring an amazingly shot photo from a page of Teen Vogue, my passion for fashion photography was born.

Here are some of my N. J. Roy favorites. With the perfect angle, focus, lighting, exposure, and mixture of colors, he can capture the carefreeness and the sensuality of a woman. Of a fashionably clad woman, rather.

“I started taking pictures at a very early age. I think I was six when I first started. I never thought of it as anything more than taking pictures for fun. But that's when I got addicted to the idea of freezing a moment; there was something about that concept I thought was cool, to just go click, click, click and know that you're stopping moments in time.”

- N. J. Roy