How Lita Puyat saw the light after the darkroom
(& the sweetness of life in the kitchen)
Choice (a responsible one, that is) is a gift, a birthright, a ticket to a second chance.
The moment you realize that you are not stuck to the present is the moment you secure a better future.
Lita Puyat, who belongs to a family that runs successful business enterprises ( like bowling alleys and a pizza chain), was one of the Philippines’ most acclaimed lifestyle and portrait photographers in the ‘90s.
In high school at the Assumption Convent in Makati City, she was already photo editor of our school paper, Facets, eventually becoming its editor. I wanted to follow in her footsteps as editor (and eventually did).
They were big footsteps, literally. For Lita was big. There was no other way to put it mildly. But she was happy with her choice, even with her choice of career after college, even if it was lanes away from bowling and pizza.
As a photographer, Lita’s reputation as a perfectionist preceded her, and I remember one time she refused to take on a photo shoot for me because there was not enough preproduction work done for it. Lita, you were one terror.
Among those who had their portraits taken by Lita was the late former President Cory
Aquino. Many of the glamour girls of the ‘90s also posed before Lita’s lenses.
“I started out with self-assignments. Then when my studio, Penombra, Inc., opened in 1993, commercial assignments took over. These were shoots for magazines, CD covers, portrait clients, my exhibitions, and some, just for fun. But self-assigned portraits were always my favorite, even during the busiest times of my photography career,” she recalls. Then one day, she just gave it all up. “While I LOVED photography and my life revolved around it in the 12 years that I had my photo studio, I was disenchanted by the changes brought on by digital photography and how it undermined the industry,” Lita says frankly. Since she couldn’t buck the trend, she simply left it.
“In a nutshell, the skills that ‘ film photographers’ learnt and built up over years of hard work were suddenly debunked by technology, which now gave anyone with very little experience and knowhowthe tools to replicate them. While there is always an up side to this, I daresay it really did turn around the business side of commercial photography,” she continues.
“I was very happy with what I had achieved and I was ready to move on to something else.”
*** But few expected Lita to move out of the darkroom and into the kitchen.
Lita went to Sydney “on a whim” in 2005 to visit a cousin. At this point in her life, she was ripe for a reboot. If she were posing for the cameras, it was time for a Take Two. “And just like when I shifted from filmmaking to still photography, the transition was rather seamless because just when I was wanting to pursue my passion in cooking, I discovered Le Cordon Bleu Sydney and managed to make the move to Australia,” she recalls.
“Everything that followed was serendipitous. I love Sydney! As they say, ‘Life happens when you’re busy making plans’!”
What Lita initially intended to be a one-and-a -half-year stay extended to eight years.
“I was fortunate enough to land jobs in top Sydney restaurant kitchens,” she shares. “It was extremely difficult on the body and the ego, but I survived! Early on, I decided to focus on pastry because the temperament and hours required to work in the hot kitchen were less appealing to me.”
Lita, the consummate artist, also loved the presentation and plating of beautiful desserts.
“And wouldn’t you know it, being a pastry chef is very similar to being a darkroom technician! There are times, temperatures and techniques that are specific, that is why,” she points out.
And to think Lita never baked a cake until she was in mid-life! “A friend came over with the Magnolia
Cookbook and showed me how, when I first bought a KitchenAid. I had really started to bake only when my photo studio wasn’t doing too well and I wanted to give my clients a nice Christmas gift anyway. So I made Tarte Tatin, which did not require a mixer. I made all the pastry with my hands, and made Tarte Tatins for three years, then I bought a mixer.”
*** Lita had moved on to a new place and took on a new job. Was she happy with her rebooting?
“Happy is an understatement!” she exclaims. “Change is good! And to constantly evolve, one must change. Also, facing your fears is incredible!”
But shifting careers wasn’t the only big change in Lita’s mid-life. Like a flash that pops before your very eyes and causes you to blink, the new drastic change in Lita’s life was almost blinding.
Lita decided to put an end to a lifelong struggle with her weight. On May 8 this year, she cleared her kitchen and apartment of all “forbidden food,” which included sugar, butter, flour, among others, and gave it all to the son of her personal trainer, a budding chef. She also said goodbye to a home-based cake business.
On May 9, she started on the Cohen diet. In 12 weeks, she shed 38.5 lbs. (17.5 kilos). When I saw photos of the new Lita in her sister Marivic’s FB Page, I had to look twice. Losing was winning! “Let’s just say it happened at a time in my life when I wasn’t feeling too good about myself. So I wanted to do something that would make me feel great and that no one could take away. I own it now! It’s a lifetime commitment now!” she swears about her weight loss.
“When I lost weight I lost a lot of negative issues in my life,” she adds.
Becau se of Lit a’s com m it ment to maintaining her weight, she doesn’t think she can ever go back to being a pastry chef again.
“However, I continue to apply all I learned as a chef from work experience and Le Cordon Bleu by cooking Cohen-friendly meal creations, which I plan to parlay into a new career and help others ‘lose weight deliciously’,” Lita discloses.
She recently was hired to be the resident chef at a four- day Cohen Lifestyle Retreat in Queenstown, New Zealand starting this October.
And so goes the journey of Lita Puyat, a journey full of twists, turns, and now, curves! From professional photographer, to pastry chef, to healthy food chef, she’s living by her choices — deliciously!