It's been an amazing year, both professionally and personally, and I wanted to celebrate it a bit by sharing some of my favorite work from 2017. If you played any role in encouraging me, sharing my work, or especially in hiring me THANK YOU. Truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Patrick Michael Chin

When I first began venturing into photography in the hospitality industry I would think, "If I could ever work with Soho House, I've made it." Well this wraps up my second year working with them and I'm still loving every opportunity I have there. Soho House just does everything right - from the design, to the service and the experience, it's all just done with such thoroughness and thoughtfulness. If you've ever visited a Soho House you could probably guess that it's probably hard to make a bad photo there. We end up doing anywhere from three to five shoots a year together and they're always a bit different - sometimes food and drink, sometimes interiors and vignettes, sometimes lifestyle but always fun. I think I do some of my best work with Soho House simply because it gets me so creatively excited to be there.

Photographed in Miami Beach, Florida.

This was such a challenging but fun shoot to put together, and in the end I couldn't have been happier with how it all turned out. Men's Wearhouse was wanting to advertise based around the different events leading up to a man's wedding - the engagement, the engagement party, getting ready before the wedding, and the honeymoon. This seems easy enough, except they wanted to do it all without anyone else in the shot except the one model, no extras or bride-to-be. It would have been so easy to tell the story of each of those events with the extra models but without them the story had to be encompassed in just the setting, the outfit, and the model's expression. I couldn't have done it nearly as well without the help of my secret weapon, Josh Owen, who helped produce, style and even assist a bit on this entire project.

Photographed in Orlando, St Petersberg and Daytona Beach, Florida.

The Great Discontent was the first magazine/blog I started to follow where it felt like like they were "one of us". From their first interviews I came across it was clear they were a bit different and I always admired the people they chose to cover, the way they approached interviewing them, and also the photographers they were having shoot them. It was many of the people I looked up to most, and it's wild to me that now, three or four years after first coming across TGD that I was asked to lend a hand! This shoot did come about in quite a fun way though... TGD was looking for a photographer in Central Florida and had put out an all-call on Twitter to try and see who might be interested since I guess they didn't know many photographers down here. Thankfully my friend, Judson Collier, basically lives on Twitter and quickly recommended me for the shoot, which was followed soon after by many other friends and peers who chimed in to put in a kind word as well. I couldn't have been paired up with a more sweet and fun subject, and I had a blast photographing Syd Weiler for the story. You can see the full spread and read the interview here.

Photographed in Sarasota, Florida.

Freehand Hotel LA is the latest of the Freehand expansion that grew out of Miami via the Sydell Group. I've worked with the Sydell Group for a few years now and I don't think anyone is doing cooler things in the hotel and culture space than them. Between The LINE, The NoMad, the Saguaro Palms and The Freehand their portfolio of hotels couldn't be more fun to work with. Being that this Freehand is quite new, we spent our time covering a variety of subjects - interiors, food and beverage, architecture, and a bit of lifestyle imagery as well.

Photographed in Los Angeles, California.

If you know my story at all you may know that Real Thread was the last place I worked before going full-time with photography in 2014. Since then they've continued to have me help on occasional photoshoots and because I know the brand so well they provide me a lot of freedom. Because of that creative freedom making these photos is always a lot of fun and I'm really happy with the images we made.

Photographed in Orlando, Florida.

Gather is a new project from Ugmonk, who I’ve worked with for a few years now. Jeff (Ugmonk) saw a need for a beautiful, functional and minimal desk organizer and apparently so did a lot of other people because it raised over $400,000 on Kickstarter. Working on this project is what finally inspired me to quit procrastinating on redesigning my office and now I have a fancy new workspace thanks to Jeff kicking my butt in gear.

Photographed in Philadelphia (PA) and Orlando (FL).

This is actually the largest and longest project I worked on this year, despite sharing very little about it throughout 2017. Knight Agency in Orlando was kind enough to bring me on to help update Kessler’s online presence with a bunch of new imagery for each of their 11 properties around the country over the course of about six months.

Photographed in Orlando (FL), Savannah (GA), Charleston (SC), Asheville (NC), Mountain Brooke (AL), and Beaver Creek (CO).

Point Royal is a new seafood concept from celebrity chef, Geoffrey Zakarian, inside the Diplomat Beach Resort. We spent one day, the day before their grand opening, photographing their space, selections from the menu, and making a portrait of Geoffrey for press.

Photographed in Hollywood, Florida.

Death to the Stock Photo was one of the first companies to ever hire me when I first got started and since then David (who runs DTS) and I have become good friends. I mentioned to David that I was in Chicago for some work and would love to work on something fun for Death to Stock since it had been a few months. Two days later I was flying around the city in a helicopter at sunset with my good buddy, Seth Dunlap.

Photographed in Chicago, Illinois.

I had the pleasure of working on this project for William Rast alongside my friends at Kindler Studios. I’ve known the Chambers brothers (Kindler Studios) since their days living in Orlando and have loved watching them grow into quite a creative powerhouse since moving to Charleston a few years back. We spent two days in the Tennessee countryside making lifestyle and product images for William Rast’s in-store displays at Belks.

Photographed in Franklin, Tennessee.

I first heard of Collective Retreats through the Conde Nast mailing list and I was instantly in love with what they were doing. I reached out not long after and didn’t really hear anything back for months until one day they reached out asking if I could help them make photos for their newest property in Upstate New York. I spent three days on property capturing details and wides of their beautiful tents, the property itself, and the farm-to-table dinners made from produce from a farm just down the road.

Photographed in Hudson Valley, New York.

For as much as I get to travel throughout the year it’s usually work related with maybe a day or two for recreation. My family and I were due for some non work-related travel so we went to Europe with the kids, my brother and his girlfriend Annie and one of our closest friends, Lauren. We started in Paris, France where my brother ended up proposing to Annie. A few days later we took the train over to England where we spent two nights at the Soho Farm House in Oxfordshire followed by three nights in London. After that we went to Amsterdam, which actually ended up being our favorite stop of our journey, and then ended our time in Europe in Copenhagen.