A field manifesto.

M

Subic's always made great work. What it's missed — at least not in the way we needed — was a room to find each other in, and a space built for how we actually work. That's the gap we're closing.

We grew up making things here. Photographs. Florals. Resin. Edits. Newsletters. We watched friends move to Manila for the scene, the studios, the rooms full of people who cared about the same things. They shouldn't have had to.

This is two ideas, kept separate on purpose.

One: a community. Free monthly meetups. Pop-up portrait days. Workshops led by people from around here. A directory so the rest of the country can hire from here. Nothing gated. All of it pointing the same way — more of us, in the same room, who recognise each other's work.¹

Two: a studio house. 500 sqm in the Subic Bay Freeport. Two self-shoot studios. A hero space for productions. A retail front for Gawang Diwa. A coffee bar for the long edits. We're funding it with a small founders' round so the people who use it have a real claim on it.

The order matters. The community comes first because it survives without us. The studio doesn't.²

We have one bias: we make things for a living, and we build for ourselves first. The studios are sized to the shoots we actually do. The hero space has the ceiling height we wished we'd had. The coffee bar is wired for a laptop because we've spent enough afternoons in cafes that aren't.

If you've ever wished there was a room for what you do here — this is that. If you've ever wished there was a place to shoot in Subic that didn't mean an hour-and-a-half drive south — that's coming. If you've already decided you want in: drop your name or help us build it.

— Gabriel & Sophia

RECEIVED · 2026 · SUBIC