Patrick Michael Chin

How would you describe yourself?

My wife would describe me as a dreamer. In a good and bad sense. She’s more of a realist to it’s helpful for me. I constantly bounce from one idea to the next.

Being a self-described dreamer, is photography a glimpse into a better world?

The goal is to make a space look better than it is, right? So when you’re capturing a space or when you’re trying to tell a story for a business, you want it to look like the most idealized version that you can. You start to think about if I take a if I take a photo, how can someone place themselves in this.

When did you first pick up a camera?

I was in college. It was my freshman year. I had mentioned to a friend of mine that was a photographer that I was interested in photography but I didn’t know anything about it. He gifted me a camera in 2006. It’s an old ’60s Canon FX. It’s just an all metal, feel-like-you-can-throw-it-against-the-bricks-and-it’s-going-to-be-fine camera. Not everyone had a camera with them all the time so I was like the guy who always had a camera with me in college. I’d bring it on trips.

Until the company I was working at in 2014, I still had never used a digital SLR. My company at the time bought me a camera and asked if I wanted to become their photographer in-house. I do feel like a lot of my story has been people seeing the things that I’m excited about and kind of championing them for me. So I feel like I owe a lot of other people credit for where I’ve gotten just because I don’t know that I would’ve tried.

Would you say there needs to be more people reaching out and encouraging others to pursue artistic passions?

I think one of the best things you can do when people are pursuing some sort of artistic anything is both give them loving criticism if they’re wanting that, but also encouraging what they’re trying to do and buying their art or, you know, telling them they’re on the right track. Anything you can do to help them along. They’re not going to get where they’re going without the people around them kind of pushing them and spurring them on.

Do you think we have that in Orlando?

Man, I think, legitimately, Orlando’s in a really cool creative time. It’s a tight-knit community that’s trying to help each other. It feels like everyone in Orlando is aware that we’re in a cool point as far as there’s a lot of growth happening and there’s a lot of new ideas being tried here. You know, I can acknowledge that there’s a lot of other cities that are much further ahead than we are culturally or creatively but all that means is that there’s more opportunity here to attempt those things. It’s like the perfect time. If you have something you want to try, there’s a lot of people that want to see it work. So yeah, I love the community here right now.