Behind every page on a magazine is a story. Each photo shoot is the result of hours of collaboration, coordination, and discussion: Who will we feature, and why? Who will write the story? What will he/she wear? Who will do the hair and makeup?

Usually, an editor’s job is to be on top of all those things. Clinton Palanca once said that the higher you go up the editorial ladder, the less writing you actually get to do. It’s true; the editor-in-chief usually just dashes off the editor’s note, although she does a lot of other things. I used to write a bunch of things for Metro, but lately, I’ve been asking contributors to write instead of doing all the articles myself (I’d rather not spread myself too thin because there are a gazillion other things to do).

But once in a while, we still get our hands dirty. Check out our feature on Julia Abad, the head of the Presidential Management Staff, in the October issue of Metro. I didn’t do the article myself, but I asked questions at the interview. And well, this:

...there I am, holding the painting closer to the frame

The final product

See, who said editors don’t do the dirty work?

Can you name all those boys?

The photo above is a behind-the-scenes shot from the August issue of Metro, which discussed Star Magic’s main man, Johnny Manahan. Doing this shoot was a logistics nightmare like no other, and I wasn’t even involved in logistics. Imagine all the calls and planning that went into this just to get our pages done!

Some friends have told me that they’d kill to get into some of our shoots, but I’m generally unimpressed by celebrity. I think a lot of media people are. We’ve met too many of them to know that celebs are usually people who are just trying to do their job, and it just so happens that their jobs entail a lot of media exposure. Of course, I’ve also met some divas who have crazy egos and a strong sense of self-entitlement, but artistas are usually a lot more quiet and unassuming than we think they are. And if some of them snap, it’s because they’re asked the same inane questions a hundred times a day. I’d snap, too—wouldn’t you?

So many potential captions for this photo, haha. It could already be a poster for a teleserye or something. Wonder who's the contrabida :p

Who was the nicest artista you’ve ever met? How about the most annoying?

(Day 3, 30-Day Blog Challenge)