ProFora Media welcomes renowned professional photographer Edwin Celestino, as one of our featured speakers for the month of October.

Edwin Celestino is one of the Philippines’ foremost fashion and commercial advertising photographers. Collaborating with agencies such as J. Walter Thompson, Basic Advertising and BCD/PinPoint, his photos have enhanced the message of numerous ad campaigns. Having started in 1977 as an in-house photographer for the Metro Manila Commission, he is now transferring his knowledge to the new generation, first as a teacher in the UST College of Fine Arts and for the past 5 years, in the DLS-College of St. Benilde.

Beyond what’s written on Edwin’s speaker bio, however, we have managed to dig up ten things you might want to know about him, just to get more acquainted with Edwin Celestino:

1.  Edwin is the technical half of the only husband-and-wife photographer team in the Philippines.  He and Tesz Celestino had clocked some thirty odd years of experience working with designers like Pitoy Moreno, Ben Farrales, Frederick Peralta, Cesar Gaupo, and Lulu Tan Gan.   Their work has been published in the coffee table books, TAO: The Filipino People, KASALAN: Philippine Weddings, Philippine Costumes, and in magazines like Design And Architecture, InStyle and LifeStyle Asia.

2.  In 1977, while working for the Metro Manila Commission, he unhooked himself from the helicopter’s safety harness just to get the right angle for a picture of the reclamation area that would become the CCP Complex.  The “that-was-a-really-dumb-thing-to-do moment” only occurred to him several awkward seconds after he was back on the ground.

3.  Goes into God mode when on a photo shoot.  If you’re the client, tell him how you want the picture to come out, then step back and let him work.  If you’re the model, don’t tell him you know better- or better yet, don’t even talk- or he walks out.

4.  Can be bribed with a case of Coca-Cola.  Make sure it’s not diet or Zero though, as he can tell the difference since he averages 3 liters a day.

5.  Laughs like a loon when he sees people shooting outdoors and their portable flash units are pointing straight up “…what are you bouncing the additional light off?  The sky?”

6.  Thinks that people who keep their DSLRs on “Automatic” and call themselves good photographers, should be shot.  Considering the affordability of cameras today, an AK-47 clip just wouldn’t have enough bullets.

7.  Always brings a Canon A570 point and shoot digicam and uses the pictures he takes with it to emphasize that learning the basics is more important than the equipment.

8.  Remodeled part of our house and built a darkroom just so he could “play” with all the aspects of conventional photography and because he wanted to learn more.   He figured that his children didn’t need an additional bedroom anyway since his son and daughter hadn’t reached the point of actually killing each other yet.

9.  Can do things with conventional film photography that is only possible now with PhotoShop.  Up to this day, his children’s friends think that they each had a twin that died because of a picture Edwin had experimented on with double exposure.

10.  Has The Beatles, Ne-Yo and Akon on repeat in his iPod but memorized all The BackStreet Boys songs for videoke.  Give him a mic and he’ll belt out “Quit Playing Games With My Heart”, complete with the dance moves.

Edwin Celestino will be conducting a series of photography webinars together with ProFora Media, with actual field trips and face-to-face sessions mixed in.   His first set of photography workshops, Basic Photography: Understanding Exposure, begins on October 22.