I have a photo of an empty chair in a classroom in the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy — or what we used to call AS, Arts and Sciences, back in the day. Nothing special: a worn chair on an old wooden floor, soft light falling through dusty windows, a fan in the corner. I didn’t plan the shot. I just saw it — the silence, the waiting, the hint of a story that probably no one else noticed. And I pressed the shutter.

It wasn’t technically perfect. But it felt true. That’s what I’ve come to believe about photography: you’re not just taking pictures.

At first, I thought I was creating something — setting the scene, composing, controlling. But the longer I stayed with the craft, the more I realized it was never really about me creating anything new. It was about capturing what’s already there. The shooting ideas came from the moment. The here and now, what’s in front of me, framed in the state of mind in the instant when your eye, your mind, and your gut all say: This is it. Click.

Sometimes, a thought bubbles up in the moment and connects with the image before me. There is no grand plan. Which came first, the idea or the picture? It doesn’t matter. I perceive a gestalt, an imagined context around something real, and feel the need to capture it. Getting the perfect shot isn’t the goal — what matters is catching what exists in that instant within the eternal moment.

People stress about getting the perfect shot. Don’t. There is no perfect shot. There’s only the honest shot — the one that holds a feeling that was real for a moment. Sure, you’ll learn the technicals — things like aperture, shutter speed, depth of field, and so on. But for me, the essence lies in what the mind sees once the eye transmits light through glass. That feeling is everything.

You only get better by shooting. Practice is everything. Through practice, you learn what captures both what’s seen and what’s felt — by heart and mind together. And this is why, to me at least, the best or most satisfying images I’ve captured are the ones from the gut; the visceral shot, as it were. Hindi siya intellectual process. Galing sa puso, galing sa bituka, minsan galing sa bayag. Intellectualization, to me, is a vanity. It steals credit from the heart. Don’t overthink it.

If you’re just starting, don’t get paralyzed by gear or settings. Curious is good — but let your camera handle the math and science if you must. Switch to AUTO or aperture priority and let the machine do its job. What counts is the humanities — the feeling.

No shot is meaningless. From tiny flickers of light to the swirl of stars, everything is charged with a reason — the will of the Divine Sovereign, if you believe in such things. There’s a reason you took or will have taken the shot, even if you don’t see it yet.

So don’t overthink. Don’t wait for the “right” light, the “right” place, the “right” time. Take the shot. Imperfection is what makes an image breathe.

St. John Henry Newman once wrote:

“I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons… I am part of His great work; a fellow-laborer in some great work which I do not understand. I am a mystery.”

So shoot from that mystery. Frame the unseen in the seen. The old chair in the empty classroom taught me that.

There is no perfect shot. There is only now.