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Washington Chua
@washingtonchua
Landscape photographer based in the US
It all came from years and years of energy and passion with a little bit of frustration collected together from the time I could not afford to buy a camera when I used to live in the Philippines. I lived on Cebu Island and I could not even afford a phone back then – having a phone in the Philippines is a luxury for many and the island I come from, and many others, are getting more civilized only now. I moved to the US when I was 17, I entered the military, worked hard first as an aircraft mechanic and later as a flight attendant on particular flights for private clients. That switch to becoming a flight attendant was very unexpected and the travel that came with it as well. I have always been fascinated by culture – growing up in an immersed well-diverse culture that’s found in the Philippines due to its history enlightened my mind that we’re just a small portion of the world.
"And that alone gave me a reason to why I want to learn every culture out there in the world now that traveling had become accessible to me."
"The hard work allowed me to buy some camera gear equipment, and got my first mirrorless camera about two years ago."
First I was a video enthusiast, I still am – I even kind of hated photography because I couldn’t get how to convey a whole story in just one single shot. My iPhone did the job in the beginning – I used it to create videos, got noticed and even started to do small gigs. Actually, my first $400 paid gig was an iPhone creation. Fast moving forward, I am a content creator and director now. It’s the creative process from start to finish where I find excitement out of all things in this industry whether that be working on a Branding Video, Instagram Ad Video, or a Magazine Photoshoot. It’s because that is where the “good” and the “bad” happens, especially when you’re working in teams. It’s how you uplift each other and bounce off creative ideas to create the best product at the end of the day. The same goes for being a flight attendant and the process of coming up with a great menu & meals that’s up to restaurant standards.
"Having the team around you, getting creative with plating and presentation to deliver the best meal as possible to our customers is just one of the challenging and fun parts."
"My two jobs really complement each other. I get to travel a lot and each single minute of free time I have during a layover in a certain country or city I use to go out, explore and create."
Different countries and cultures generate more content for me to learn and build, making what I do ideally different and my own. It is the event of experiencing cultures from different countries down from the cuisine department up to the architect department. Those examples alone allow me to compel, compose and gather well-written or visual-pleasing content. It’s also because both of these examples share really similar characteristics such as textures, symmetry, feeling and depth. So if you want the audience to feel they’re somewhere in the Middle East or in London, given those similarities from the two examples I have mentioned, can make your job as a filmmaker/photographer easy and also give you an idea of what to shoot on the job.
"Each place is also a true source of inspiration to me. Every country and experience is unique. But what struck me the most was when I traveled to this country called Timor-Leste in the Pacific."
I had never heard of this country but we flew some leaders there – while they were helping out with the country’s democracy and other governmental topics, I was talking to some of the locals in the country and asking about their culture, history, just overall lifestyle and what it feels like to live there. What was shocking about it is how they just recently gained their independence in 2002 and they haven’t had that many presidents. It just shows that the world is so huge and there are so many different ways of living, leading, creating, building…and so on! It is a developing country and that place reminded me of my childhood and teenage years in the Philippines. People were very genuine, the children playing football, and when I took out my camera their curiosity was great as a camera is something very distant from them. It was very touching – it was like I was looking at myself back in the Philippines in 2011/2012. I interacted with these people – for me this is traveling. Embracing culture, experiencing differences and learning from them. I notice a very different mindset among colleagues who prefer to enjoy their free time in the hotel at the swimming pool. Nothing wrong with that, it’s another definition of traveling.
"Though for me it is about interacting with locals, being confronted with my own lifestyle and thinking patterns, learning and taking up new ways of doing things. That specific travel will remain in my memory forever cause it taught me a different perspective in life. That’s what travel is all about for me."
"Being used to travel so regularly for my job, the COVID-19 has dramatically influenced me."
Being on lock-down and not being able to travel as much has given me some time to reflect and really have a conversation with myself about the why/what/how behind what I am doing and in what direction I want to take this passion of mine. It’s so easy to get caught up in work, I know for many it has been hard but this situation allowed me to slow down, reflect on what I was doing and it has pushed my creativity. I think many visual creators can relate to this; I noticed that I have collected a good amount of footage/still images in the library from my past travels but Instagram deep-seated this standard in my brain that you can only post the “banger” photo or the best photo you have. Which means that you have lots of photos that are just there in your library, not getting any attention because the ‘banger’ you posted was the most important. The COVID-19 has prevented me to create content as much as I wanted, which really changed my mindset.
"It allowed me to focus on the storytelling part of the photos no matter if it's the “banger” standard of mine or Instagram’s, and I started treating it like more of a video on how certain pieces in the carousel photos will relate to my story narrative."
First I was always sharing one photo, accompanied by a written caption. Now I am creating series of photos and use words in the image to convey and strengthen the message because not everyone reads the caption. My Space Collection is my favorite series out of all the carousel I have posted. As much as it pushed my imagination to a whole different level playing around with certain typeface/fonts and some graphic elements to my photos, it also has challenged my story narrative as these photos were taken at different times and different days. And I asked myself how I could stitch these photos together to have a concept relative to how I was feeling that day when I was traveling to different locations. It is a diary of challenges, a journal to look back and a reflection for myself.
"People tend to listen to other people's ideas and criticism and follow trends around them, but I am ultimately creating for myself."
I don’t care what other people think, although feedback is a good thing – there has to be a balance. It is important to find your own voice and listen to it in the middle of the noise of what’s said and done around you. What others are doing can inspire you, it can give you that push you need to finish your own image — the work that is driven by your voice, unique from another perspective. My photos are considered “moody” by most people but there’s usually a deeper motive behind every photo. One of the checkboxes I check off when editing a photo is considering the true purpose of the image… It does not matter if I’m editing a single photo or a series of photos, landscapes, portrait or product shots. I want the audience to feel what the purpose and message is behind what I’m editing and to guide their eyes to the subject matter.
"What has helped me a lot in my personal and professional growth is surrounding myself with people that are driven by purpose and vision, and not by ego."
I pick and choose who I want in my circle, people that I know I can learn from and can identify my weaknesses. People I feel that are ‘healthy’ for me to have around and that have credibility in this rough road called passion. A situation I can give is where I got an email from this watch company for a collaboration and I did not know what to do with it. So I reached out to my Instagram friend Brandon (@visua1s_) about how I should tackle this situation without messing it up. The next moment Brandon and I were on the phone together and he helped me out through the step by step process of it. That is just amazing. I don’t know who Brandon is in real life, but a person that’s huge in the game that is helping out a small creator definitely changed how I look at things in the Instagram community.
We all have our projects, objectives, aspirations and healthy sense of competition – I am flight attendant, part time student in Marketing and Digital media, I am creating an app as a side project with a few others and planning to make my film/photography business into a full time job. Of course we want the best for ourselves, we need time and focus to get things done the best way possible. But we also have a heart. We are still human and it’s just amazing when you can help out others or when others are willing to help you out.
"You can be proud and happy when achieving your goals on your own, but there’s nothing more satisfactory to me than the feeling of creating something great together, supporting and helping people with a good vibe and seeing them achieving their goals too."
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