Manuel Librodo, Jr.
Strokes of a Genius
By Mafelou C. Leagogo-Agriam
In the worldwide community of photographers who join the fiercely competitive digital photography contests in the internet, to mention, www.dpchallenge.com, www.digitalimagecafe.com and www.betterphoto.com, Bangkok-based Ilonggo Manuel “Manny” Libres Librodo, Jr. stands out for garnering countless top awards. For this reason, he is ranked by his peers just a step behind the world’s number one shutterbug, a fellow in Iceland.
A portrait photographer by heart and a Psychology teacher by profession, Manny elicits unrestrained excitement from both competitors and his huge fanbase over his photographs splashed on the website. Manny’s on-line gallery (www.pbase.com/manny_librodo) shows the most number of viewers, hitting a record high of 16 million since he opened in 2004.
Although his portraits are much admired, the man has not gone full-blown commercial. His exemplary works are found in selected media forms: the annual UNICEF calendars, postcards and posters; photography and travel magazines; company literatures; advertisements; and websites of corporations and private individuals. His framed photos occasionally displayed in exhibits are lapped up by private art collectors. And probably one of the loudest acclamations to his superiority in the field of photography is his being an endorser of Nikon Philippines and Digiprint.
What is a Manny Librodo photograph like that it enthralls his peers and fans alike? Take a good look at his picture. It hits you in the heart. A typical Librodo portrait seems to probe into the soul of his subject and unravels its nature. In a word, he describes his work as “lyrical.”
“It sings a song of emotion. It recites a soulful poem. It paints a dramatic light. A picture is worth a second glance only if it conveys an emotion. My goal is to infect my viewers with what they see in my picture. Be it a smile, a frown, a hopeful gaze or a look of despair, life is worth sharing,” he enthuses.
In the four years that he immersed himself in the realm of photography, he remains true to his style. The world is his studio and source of inspiration. The sun supplies him the natural light he uses in all his pictures. While the shadows it causes add drama to his art form, colors are an essential element he cannot live without.
Unaccustomed to a world of photography based on a more controlled set-up, Manny follows his gut feel and shoots with his heart. There is no drawing board to speak of; neither filter, flashes nor tripod. They cramp his sense of spontaneity, he says. “I may be blind to the technical side of photography but I have my eyes to see beauty in such unimaginable places.”
Where does this sense of free spiritedness spring from? Manny’s childhood was spent in the rustic part of Lambunao, a town in Iloilo. As the fourth son of six children of public school teachers, life, he says, was a constant struggle for survival and identity. Through all this, his parents, Manuel, Sr. and Coroy, were both a model of selfless sacrifice and encouragement. The family values that they instilled on their children, like ambition and industry, incessantly challenged Manny’s sense of adventure, ingenuity and competition, driving him to graduate at the top of his class.
Amidst this milieu, he found comfort in solitude, observing people passing by. He admired the finer things in life and everything beautiful. In his teens, he acquired the gift of eloquence and wrote or spoke of his thoughts, visions and imagination in different forums.
The power of a captivating picture over a thousand words he came to realize only by happenstance. One day while waiting for his turn in a dental clinic, he came upon the Mabuhay, an in-flight glossy magazine of the Philippine Air Lines. He fell in love with the beautiful pictures. “Looking at the expressive faces in the magazine was almost heaven to me.” he exclaims. It was his initiation into the world of photography.
In the year 2000, Manny left Iloilo for a teaching post in Bangkok, Thailand, armed with a college degree in Social Science from the University of the Philippines in the Visayas and a string of past work experiences, such as, as a language instructor with the US Peace Corps, as a teacher in an exclusive school for boys, and as a regional marketing man in an insurance firm. He teaches Psychology to junior and senior high school students of the prominent Ramrudee International School in Bangkok. This day job sustains his expensive photography hobby.
At the start, Manny’s pioneer attempt at the craft was limited to being a spectator. “I like colors and patterns. I like displays of majesty and splendor. I like to experience unique cultures. All of these interests eventually led to travel, and photography entered the mix merely as a means to document my journeys. At first I carried a simple point-and-shoot camera and always wanted to be in the picture myself. The random people who clicked the shutter didn’t frame me well.”
Dissatisfied with the end-results, he resolved to direct the scenes himself. “Hence I made the difficult decision to leave ‘my modeling days’ behind and become a photographer. My early photos focused mainly on patterns and tricks of light. My results were eye-pleasing, but what I really wanted to do was photograph people. I needed a live model… I would want to capture the expression and emotions I found so captivating on film.”
He had nothing but a few brave Thai students as models to start with. He had to use a lot of resourcefulness to create props out of a veil, a blackboard or a wall, and to find the light and shadow suited for certain intent. His knowledge in Psychology came in handy in drawing out the desired mood from his models. It wasn’t long, however, before his photographs were recognized.
“I was featured in a Thai magazine where one spread showed the pictures of my students. The following day in school, words must have gotten around fast about the beautiful pictures in the magazine because more students came up to me offering to pose as models. Now I can get anyone to model for me.”
Manny goes to shooting expeditions lugging a camera bag for his Nikon D3 and 24-70 Nikkor lens, his old 70-200 Nikkor lens and an Epson P5000 for showing his pictures to others. His extensive travels to Europe, Canada, Cambodia, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Thailand and the Philippines have amassed tons of incredible photos of people and their culture, history and sights, which one day will be incorporated in an awe-inspiring coffeetable book, his ultimate goal. Manny acknowledges his brother Jose (Boboy) for playing a vital role in his endeavors. “He is my walking manual in my photography and photoshop works.”
How does he choose his models, one may ask. “…. I look for faces with character… I can spot them in a room full of people. Be it on the streets of Nepal, in a Balinese classroom, a beach in the Philippines, or a temple in Thailand. I am drawn to faces that have stories to tell.
“More than one people have told me that I have a natural charm with people. I honestly don’t know what to make of that; but I do smile a lot and when they smile back I take a photo.
“Kids are such naturals because they don’t act or become worried about the camera. They’re just themselves and I happily snap photos as they chase a frog or jump over benches.
“With a few exceptions, most of the women I meet enjoy having their pictures taken. But the men are often too shy to pose – even though they clearly have this gnawing desire to be ‘framed’.
“When it comes to the elderly, I specially enjoy immortalizing their pride and dignity on film. The bottom line is: Everybody wants to be photographed, but it is how you approach them that makes the difference.”
From among the numerous people he has caught in stills, one stands out as his all-time favorite: Rosalinda. She is an Ilongga cigarette vendor in her sixties and mother of 11 children, whom he met while vacationing in Iloilo City.
“I didn’t know her nor had I seen her before,” Manny relates. “But that day when the jeepney I was riding passed her on the street corner I knew she was someone I had to meet. She was selling cigarettes, and what initially caught my attention was her flaming pink hair. Then I noticed her face: wrinkled yet beautiful; worn yet dignified…”
His Rosalinda portrait evokes a thousand meaning. One would be of a tough woman whose deep lines and sun-ravaged, dark, old, leathery skin testify to a hardened life; yet her Mona Lisa smile and ringed fingers subtly suggest a feminine wile. More tales will be woven about the cigarette vendor with the coy smile as she moves from place to place in the four corners of the globe, because the Rosalinda portrait will affect people in multifarious ways.
“There is so much to explore in the human face,” Manny says. “From the smooth skin of the children to the wrinkles of the olds, all the lines and textures carry a thousand words. But a portrait can do more. It can tell us a thousand stories with a million words. That is what I am trying to achieve with my portraits.”
Sharing his passion to a wider audienceship, Manny conducts workshops for groups interested in photography or on a one-on-one basis. Outside Thailand, he charges a rather steep price for the sessions. Hobbyists in Davao, Iloilo, Cebu and Manila, and other parts of the world, seem not to mind his rates if only to be able to compose lyrical pictures the M.A.N.U.E.L. way. A full-time teacher that he is, workshops are done on weekends or on school holidays.
Anyone who aspires to shoot like Manny Librodo must heed his advice: keep the passion ever-burning, invest on the right gear and keep on shooting. “There’s no better learning than actually experiencing it,” he says. “Be spontaneous… Let your picture sing! Even if it’s out of tune, it still is making a statement that people cannot ignore.”
Prithee, who can possibly ignore a Manny Librodo?
Posted by creamdelacreme magazine on 2009-02-09 14:43:54
Tagged: , World-Class , Photographer