prompts in order:
- who are you?
- where is home?
- when are you happiest?
- what did your first feel like?
- what is your favorite way to waste money?
- what do you consider the most underrated virtue?
- which body part do you feel the most affection for?
- what is your favorite time of day?
- what’s a recurring theme in your life?
- which person or place do you miss that only exists in a photo?
- how do you define childhood?
- who is your favorite person?
For this exercise, I thought it would be best to answer the prompts through the eyes of someone looking from afar. Hence, I came up with "pasilip," a Filipino term for one's active pursuit of peeking. In this case, I would like to let the audience take a glimpse at some of my purest experiences outside of the character and identity I usually show to others as an Atenean. This interview is all about the Lance I perceive myself to be, in which I seek to reveal some of my deepest thoughts and values, but not the entirety of myself. In multiple answers, I also want others to see and experience my vision and how I see my world. Even if we have differences in feeling and interpreting what we both see, I hope the audience can understand better how I perceive the things around me. With the pictures I provided, I hope that would somehow be enough for others to peek at who I am and what are the things I value most and believe in.
Before doing this activity, I already had this habit of documenting moments in my life that would seem pretty much ordinary but mean a lot to me. To borrow a quote from Geloy Concepcion that I truly resonated with, "I take pictures so I can remember." So when I started to get through the instructions, my challenge was how can I capture moments based on the prompts in which others could also experience the pictures in the way I wanted them to be felt and remembered. I understand that this activity does not focus on the technical features of the pictures but rather on making the captured mundane moments meaningful also for others. The subjects involved, the overall tone and color, and the scenes shown are some of what I carefully considered in crafting this interview to overcome my perceived challenge. In general, I enjoyed doing this activity as I also took advantage of spending time with the people I cherish and reflecting on my values and beliefs at this point in life. I hope you can enjoy this too, Sir Aaron, as you get to know me a little better and deeper through the pictures I captured.
