21-camera salute for Roel

With the advent of digital cameras and cell phones, all of us are now amateur photographers. We’re always snapping away at people, places and events. The difference between what happens when we press that shutter button and when a professional gets the shot is that we just take pictures; true photographers capture the soul of a moment.

In the span of just nine days, Guam lost two of its beloved soul-catchers: P.J. Borja and Roel Santiago. P.J. passed away on October 25 in San Diego while fighting a brain tumor. He was 53 years old. Roel was only 44 when he died suddenly on November 3 of an apparent heart attack.

I knew both as fellow members of Guam’s small journalism community. Although I hadn’t seen P.J. in a while, I remember he had a unique way of kind of walk-running – I usually saw him when we were both hurriedly covering a story. But he always had time to say hello and chat for a minute or two. Roel I just saw a couple weeks ago at the groundbreaking of the Guam Community College Learning Resource Center. We spoke briefly, and he flashed me his trademark smile – I don’t think I ever remember seeing him without that bright smile on his face. It’s hard to believe both men are not in our midst any longer, and utterly ironic that Roel supplied a photograph of P.J. to some of the media when P.J. passed away.

Both shot news at one time or another, and Roel also worked for the Camacho administration. When I worked at Guahan Magazine, if we had two events to cover at the same time, our photographer, David Castro, would always say, “I’ll call Roel and see if he has any pictures.” Invariably, Roel always did.

Anyone who has worked with photographers knows that they are a breed apart. The way they view the world is completely different from the way we amateurs see it. Their images project thought and feeling more so than just showing the surface view of a person or situation. A good photograph can make you cry, laugh, be angry, wonder – thus the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Both of these men will be remembered as having helped to capture the spirit of Guam - whether it was at a hot news event, a fiesta, procession, or in a photograph of a pretty Chamorrita posing on a beach as the blazing sun was dipping into the horizon behind her. Their photographs are their legacy.

During Roel’s funeral on Saturday at St. Anthony’s Church in Tamuning, nearly every professional photographer on island gathered to bid farewell to him. All of them lined up on the right side of the church, and just before Mass, they all walked up behind his casket to give their fallen comrade a 21-camera salute. High-speed shutters clicked and cameras lights flashed simultaneously in honor of Roel - a fitting tribute to a man who spent his life behind the lens.

It’s difficult to understand why two men so relatively young were taken from us. The only thing I can figure is that maybe God needs some good photographers in heaven. So, as Mana Silva Taijeron wrote in her tribute to Roel, the next time you see a flash of lighting in the sky, it might be him or P.J. capturing an image from above.

Or maybe they’re just reminding us to look past the surface of the moment and into its soul, the way they did.