One who speaks about his chosen craft with fecundity and fervor is confirmation that he has seriously studied the medium and left no stones unturned in mastering it.

Eloquent photographer Victor Sollorano is one person whose vocabulary includes the most complex of words and expressions a lensman utters with thorough understanding. He can talk about photography with real zest as he transforms terms into magnificent images that more than equal the veracity of his communicating tongue.

A certified writer himself, he turns words into visual beauty, as he, being a highly competitive lensman, tells engaging stories through the lens.

"A picture must have mass and resonance," he noted in his interview with Picture Perfect. This short sentence alone shows a man of depth and wisdom in the 52-year-old Victor. Of course, as a disciple of good communication, he has the voice to explain his statement. He expanded, "Mass is gravity that draws us toward a particular photo and not toward another because it is both an emotional and an intellectual response on the part of the beholder. Thus, mass makes a photograph effective.

"On the other hand, a picture resonates because it exudes a kind of energy. It is engaging and not just attractive in a big way. It seeks a multi-level response from you. Once you respond, a dialog ensues between you and the photograph. You are hooked. So, resonance not only makes a photograph effective but also potent."

Victor’s photographs certainly radiate both mass and resonance, as proven by someone who recently went through his portfolio and said that ‘looking at his pictures washes away the tiredness in my bones from working the whole day.’

With love for discovering new ways of seeing and sharing it to other eyes, he has developed a knack for fine art and commercial photography. He has resided in and out of the country which somewhat helped his clientele become broad enough to include people outside the Philippines, like those from Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Thailand, and Hong Kong. These people are those who believe in his visual integrity to photography and professionalism.

He also does portraits, landscape, and still life, describing portraits as allowing him to see someone through the lens in a special way – the landscape giving him a special sense of place and time; and still life bringing his creativity and visionary approach to fruition.

"The first picture I took was that of my eldest sister, using an instamatic in the living room of our house in Sampaloc, Manila. She was dressed in a Filipina costume and I was about eight or nine," reminisced Victor who grew up in a house where there was always a camera lying around.

"Since then," he added, "I’ve been taking pictures—with or without a film in my camera—fascinated with the click of the shutter that, for me, came to symbolize a process that translates light into a picture."

Victor, born in Manila and now has four kids, is currently experiencing a milestone in his career after being chosen as the Ayala Museum Director’s Choice for the ArtistSpace this year. As a result, he is staging his 10th exhibit entitled "Visions in the Light" at the Ayala Museum, Makati this month. This show is his contemporary look at the lotus flower through digital photography, with opening cocktails to be held on Friday at 5 pm. Some of his past exhibits were held in Bangkok, Thailand so this coming one serves as a privilege for Filipino photography enthusiasts to see.

The depth in talent this well-traveled artist has is mirrored in his diverse ventures. He is currently a senior editor of a broadsheet and writing about digital photography in its technology page, while at the same time contributing magazine articles and pictures on travel and photography. He spent the last dozen years mostly in other countries, juggling from being a freelance writer, editor, page designer, and of course, photographer.

Early this year, he conducted a lecture in art photography for De La Salle University, Taft students. His lecture expounded on the value of photography’s language: "70mm/f8/125th is a language of photography. So is 135mm/f5.6/250th,’" he sampled, then explained the truth of the matter. "Knowing how to speak the language of photography is essential to take good pictures. Languages coupled with principles of composition—as in the rule of thirds, also known as dynamic imbalance, and composition based on intuition—often result in effective and potent pictures."

Back in 2002, Victor went totally ‘digital’ which for him made things better, not necessarily easier. He now has a Canon EOS 1D Mark II and an EOS 5D as work horses as he edits on a Mac Book Pro. For leisure, he still has his Nikon D100, which he bought in Vienna, Austria. Interestingly, he sent his old Fujica ST901 (with an equally old Beroflex 28 millimeter, f2.8 lens) to his 15-year-old daughter Victoria who is now in Bangkok and had enrolled in photography class.

Victor’s technical proficiency in speaking and putting to work the language of photography essentially made him into a talent who knows what he is saying and does what he is talking about. He vividly shared another piece for his pictures. "My shots take into consideration form, light and shadow, texture and tonal range. I don’t impose any feeling into the process. What I do is try to extract what is the prevailing atmosphere—the existential value—that is given to me by a particular subject or situation. It is risky, but more often than not the kind of risk I take in my photography pays off."

Looking closely at his images, one would agree with him without blinking at all.

Indeed, photography has brought out the best in Victor Sollorano’s profundity and wit. Thus, when asked to say something about his edge as a lensman. He remarked with no pun intended: "What gives my work an edgy sense of newness without being experimental is my being a visionary with a clear sense of focus."