Mark Nicdao and Wig Tysmans mix travel and fashion

Anne Curtis is the face of Plains & Prints for its 20th year

To look through the Instagram profiles of photographers is to partake in a fantasy that just happens to be their real lives. Interspersed with their professional works are snippets of their everyday activities taken with the eye of an artist (and a camera that only happens to be worth more than your entire year’s salary — although when you see their iPhone photos, you have to wonder how they do it). A fashion photographer’s travel pictures are an interesting excerise in crosstraining. They show how a person, who has mastered the art of finding the right angles and light for every face shape, every silhouette, applies this in framing a landscape, a building, an unstyled face in a crowd — although, many times, it’s not always so technical.

Fashion photographer Mark Nicdao calls shooting interesting locations his “photography for leisure.” “I go on vacations and take photos of things that interest me. I especially like how I can be freely artistic with these shots,” he says.

Portrait photographer Wig Tysmans says, “I guess you can say I have a certain lighting technique and I play with the use of shadows. But I have always believed in not restricting myself and trying out everything.”

For a collaboration with Plains & Prints, the two photographers certainly stepped outside their comfort zones, as well as their medium. Nicdao and Tysmans, both acclaimed lensmen, took an active part in creating the brand’s 20th anniversary collection, which celebrates fashion and photography. Called the “Photo Fashion Collection,” the latest Plains & Prints collaboration had Nicdao and Tysmans contribute choice photographs, which were digitally printed on the pieces. The result is a collection that evokes nostalgia and inspiration — and turned out to be a pleasant surprise to the lensmen.

Nicdao, whose photos from a Rajasthan, India trip in 2008 brought a certain magic to the collection, says, “When I saw the Plains & Prints pieces, I was very happy with the results. It’s as if I was transported back to the streets of India. It’s an achievement because a brand like Plains & Prints totally believed in me. Seeing those clothes, everything came back to me, those happy moments when I was shooting those pictures. It’s a proud moment. Not a lot of people go to India and I want to share it with everyone. It’s going to be immortalized in the clothes.”

Tysmans, on the other hand, contributed photos that are close to his heart — photos of his family taken when they still lived in Baguio in the ‘70s. The photos, which were captured in infrared film, tell a story of the past and the beauty and art that was — and still is — present in Baguio. “Combined with the Baguio scenery of the ‘70s and early ‘80s, it makes for an interesting photo, and now, an interesting print on clothes. The most I ever dreamt of was that my photos would be printed on a T-shirt, but this new collection goes way beyond that. The way it was done was also very tasteful, so I’m happy,” he says.

The Photo Fashion collection was launched recently at Plains & Prints Glorietta, with an appearance by Anne Curtis, who wore some of the pieces as the face of the campaign for the brand’s 20th year.

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The limited-edition collection is available at Plains & Prints boutiques