#TechPH - He Almost Quit Photography — Then One Tired Jeepney Driver Changed Everything
There's a version of Von Cedrick Cunanan that never went back to photography. The one who packed away his camera around 2018 and just... moved on. Got busy with civil engineering work, let the years pile up, let the shutter finger go rusty. That version of him never stood in the midday BGC heat with over 1,200 other creators, never squinted at a jeepney terminal with a single thought running through his head: this is the shot.
But here's the thing about creativity — it doesn't really leave you. It just waits.
When Canon announced the return of its Photomarathon earlier this year after a seven-year hiatus, Cunanan stumbled across the registration countdown on social media and signed up without overthinking it. First photomarathon. First photowalk, even. He showed up with his Canon EOS RP — a mirrorless camera he'd researched carefully after deciding to return to street photography in 2025 — and no real plan except to respond honestly to the day's theme: Feel It.
Two words that could mean a hundred different things. For Cunanan, they pointed him straight to a jeepney terminal.
What he found there was a driver, resting inside his vehicle in the suffocating midday heat — a quiet, unglamorous moment that most of us scroll past without registering. Cunanan stopped. He saw exhaustion. He saw the invisible weight of fuel prices, long hours, and a city that never quite slows down enough for the people keeping it moving. He raised his camera and made sure you'd feel it too.
That photograph won him the Grand Champion title at Canon Photomarathon 2026, held on April 18 at the BGC Amphitheater in Bonifacio Global City. He went home with a Canon EOS R6 III and RF24-105mm IS STM lens — a meaningful upgrade, sure, but almost beside the point. What he actually took home was proof that getting back to something you love, even after years away, is never wasted time.
This year's Photomarathon wasn't just a competition comeback — it was a genuine reimagining. Canon opened participation to all digital camera users, added a Video Category for the first time, and transformed the amphitheater into something between a festival and a creative workshop. Photographers got hands-on time with Canon's latest gear. Workshops ran across wildlife, cityscape, content creation, and cinema — led by the kind of working professionals whose work you've probably admired without knowing their names. People turned their digital captures into physical prints on-site. Canon ambassadors ran portrait sessions in a Creator Park that drew the curious and the committed in equal measure.
It's the kind of day that reminds you creativity doesn't happen in isolation. It happens when people are put in the same space, given the same constraints, pointed at the same theme, and trusted to see differently from one another.
Cunanan's story resonates beyond photography precisely because most of us have a version of it — something we were genuinely good at, genuinely loved, that got quietly shelved in the business of adult life. A language we used to speak. An instrument gathering dust. A skill that once felt like part of our identity before the identity of professional took over. What Canon Photomarathon captured this year, almost accidentally, was a reminder that returning to those things isn't regression. It's recovery.
The civil engineer picked up a camera again at 34 because street photography called him back. He walked into his first-ever photowalk, found a tired man resting in a hot jeepney, and made 1,200 people feel something. That's not beginner's luck. That's what happens when you stop waiting for the right moment and just show up.
Canon Marketing Philippines will be rolling out winning entries and event highlights across its channels in the weeks ahead, and it's worth keeping an eye on — not just for the images, but for the stories behind them. Because if Cunanan's win tells us anything, it's that the most powerful photographs aren't always the most technically ambitious. They're the ones where the photographer actually felt something first.
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