Shooting stars with Dominique James

(First of two parts)

Part of my TV job is getting thrown into photo shoots from time to time — for show anniversaries, magazine pictorials and endorsements. This has allowed me to work with some of the best in the field of photography — from the Jun de Leon, Raymund Isaac to relatively new, but promising Edward de la Cuesta.

For the longest time, however, Dominique James had eluded me (not deliberately though). We met once — on the stage of Virgin Café — when he accepted an award from S Magazine and I presented it as the host of the affair. But that was it. A local magazine one time did a profile on me and promised to bring Dominique James to the pictorial, but sent another photographer instead.

Recently, however, I finally had the chance to work with Dominique when the clothing line Jewels renewed my contract as one of its endorsers (along with Tanya Garcia, Erich Gonzales and TJ Trinidad). To my delight, the Jewels company got him to do the shoot, held in his spacious studio in a quiet street off bustling West Avenue. After the pictorial, we had the chance to talk and I got to trace his roundabout way to photography.

Aside from a photography class he took in high school, Dominique absolutely had no formal training in this field whatsoever before he got into this profession. In college — at San Beda — he finished AB Economics and was expected by his family to be a banker or put up his own business.

But somehow, he took a different route and began writing for entertainment publications (at least, he had a background in writing — having written for the school paper in high school). After a couple of years, he quit because he didn’t like the frills of show business — and "that was in contradiction to my Benedictine education," he recalls with laughter now.

From showbiz writing, he became a PR consultant for a shoe company and this was where he met some of the icons in the field of photography: Jun de Leon, Neal Oshima, Raymund Isaac and Wygs Tysman.

During pictorials, he observed how these great photographers worked and when they noticed his interest in photography, they encouraged him to try it out. It was at this point when he bought his first camera — a Canonette SQL.

He got his chance to do professional work one day when — during a shoot for the shoe company — the photographer commissioned to do the pictorial turned out to be a no show and there was no other option but for him to do the photography.

After 10 years with the shoe company, he felt it was time to move on to another phase of his life and put up his own photography studio. Oh, it was a hard climb — he recalls — and it took some five years for him to get established. But he is among the big names now and he wouldn’t have made it without the encouragement and support of those ahead of him (although he never apprenticed with any of them) in this profession and on whose lap he learned valuable lessons in the field of photography.

These are what Dominique James learned from the masters:

From Jun de Leon — How to discover the defining moment of the person you are photographing. "That’s when you capture the character of the subject," explains Dominique.

From Wygs Tysman — Composition. "His background is architecture and so he knows a lot about composition," points out Dominique.

From Raymund Isaac — The art of dealing with clients.

Dominique now himself teaches photographic modeling at John Robert Powers and at the Philippine Center for Creative Imaging where he handles three courses: Celebrity portraiture, fashion photography and fine art nude.

What does he teach the new breed of would-be photographers today? "Kids today believe that owning a camera already makes them a photographer, but that is not necessarily the case. I tell them to find the heart for it — and not to just go into it for the business."

At this point, Dominique already has the authority to dispense such words of wisdom — having gone through what he describes as "a hard climb." Undoubtedly, he is now one of the most respected names in the field of photography and I’m proud to say that — once more — I had the chance to work with one of the best in the profession.

(To be concluded)