“STAY IN YOUR DESIGNATED SPOTS, always wear your IDs, and do not make any sudden moves!” the burly Secret Service agent barked out orders from inside an incongruously bulky trench coat on a sweltering July day.

Covering presidential visits and papal audiences have their own quirky requirements. The wait can seem endless, and the anticipation, especially for the uninitiated like me, almost unbearable. This isn’t my day job (thank God, the pros tell me all the time), but there is something about shooting VIPs that always gets a photographer’s adrenalin pumping and makes it almost worth it. A name-dropping session this certainly is not, but here’s a disclosure for context. Through the years I’ve covered a Playboy heiress, a basketball legend, and football and baseball superstars, among other Chicago notables.

Then comes the Pinoy celebrity—a totally different breed and journalistic challenge. Their entourage of groupies, yayas, taga-plantsa, taga-masahe, and personal manghuhula in tow is a show in itself.

At first, this spectacle gave me that provinciano’s excited shiver. Born at a time and place when appearances by actors and actresses from Manila were infrequent, I hogged the concert circuit like any other star-struck fan shooting hundreds of rolls of film at stage fronts. In time reason, coupled with job shifts and other constraints, curbed my enthusiasm. Or perhaps it was the National Geographic pin I always wore to these events—a talisman against mediocre photography. It was taking its effect and backstage beckoned.

My first “real” Pinoy celebrity assignment was Martin Nievera—he was a revelation. Sans makeup and overprotective crew in a quiet green room awaiting curtain time, we struck up a conversation that I remember to this day. Mundane, yet it will remain off the record as with some of my images. I believe that good celebrity photography is a delicate balance between respect and responsibility to the job and your subject.

I did many more concerts after Mart (first-name basis with celebs = priceless), but few approached the access I got that night. Years later I covered a couple of divas so close I could smell their perfume—yet they remained distant, engrossed in their own worlds.

I too am often absorbed in my world once creative flow starts. I admire the bravado (not to mention boundless energy) of young artists. IBU left me puffing and panting in a nice sort of way. Freestyle and Side A had my phone and ears ringing for days. I could feel myself regressing as Geneva, an erstwhile favorite minor, pranced at an APO concert, who were still a riot after all these years. To me an all-access pass is not only a ticket to great images but also an opportunity to know the celebrity as a person. When you’re out of the spotlight and standing outside in the cool early-summer breeze, speaking to the real Leah Navarro (or Regine or Gary) is a rare treat.

I will never be paparazzi—fast driving and fence climbing scare me. But the satisfaction of having conveyed a performer’s emotion and personality with minimal duress is fulfillment enough.

Documenting the visiting Pinoy pop idol is both a joy and sweet sorrow for we know that once that euphoric trip down memory lane is over, the curtain drops and the lights go out: they will be on their way home and we are not.

Crowd control at the Freestyle/Side A Concert. Chicago. October 2003

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