THOMAS CHU PHOTO

Photography Tutorial · 2022-11-27

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts

How can landscape photography avoid homogeneous, cookie-cutter presentation?

This is a question well worth pondering for photographers and advanced enthusiasts.

In today's video, I will share three foreign landscape photographers who have inspired me, along with three lessons I have distilled from my long-term shooting.

Video

▶ Watch the video tutorial on Bilibili

This is the illustrated companion to the video above. Search 'landscape photography' and most results are postcard shots you forget in seconds — how do you avoid that sameness? Using four of his own photographs from 2011 to 2023 as the thread, plus the inspiration of three foreign photographers, Thomas distills three ways out. The four chapters below follow the video's order, with all example frames included.

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 1

01 My Four Stages: From Lotus to the Lhasa–Nyingchi Railway

In 2011, when Thomas first picked up a camera, he photographed lotus flowers in parks — practicing composition basics, on thoroughly homogenized subjects. In 2017 in Greenland he captured vertical cliffs, snow mountains and fjords together — the subject itself was exceptional, enhanced by then cutting-edge grading (at 1:27 in the video).

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 2 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 3

In 2020, photographing his hometown Chongqing — a city shot by countless people — he reached for a prop: the reflective back of a phone as a mirror, folding the Yuzhong peninsula into one frame (at 1:55 in the video). In 2023, the second year of the Lhasa–Nyingchi railway, he rode the train and framed peach blossoms through the window. These four photos map exactly onto three ways to escape sameness.

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 4 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 5

02 Invest Time, Energy and Money

The first way is the plainest: invest what others won't. The photographer featured last episode, for instance, shoots dark, foggy cityscapes — scenes your own city may hold, but the vantage points are not on any influencer's list; you have to find them yourself, then watch the forecast and wait for fog to land at dawn or dusk (at 3:10 in the video).

Energy is an investment too: three weeks trekking the K2 route in Pakistan bought him this sunrise at the foot of K2 — shot at 7 a.m. after climbing began at 11 the night before. Money counts as well: Greenland is hard to reach and brutally expensive; without funding, its villages and polar light stay out of reach (at 4:27 in the video).

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 6 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 7

03 Ideas, Creativity and a Grading Style of Your Own

The second way works right where you live. Alex Hyner's raw material is nothing but skies and everyday utility poles, yet by fusing the two — with a time-slice-like collage — he achieves striking visuals; studying others' ideas and styles matters because it feeds your own (at 5:32 in the video). Props are creativity too: a phone's reflective back, a pulled-open venetian blind, each can remake an ordinary scene.

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 8

Shanghai can be more than skyscrapers: capture what the city feels like — refined, modern, anxious with pace. Thomas picked a rainy day for a modern professional hurrying past under an umbrella, eyes on her phone, headlights lighting up the raindrops — infuse a city's temperament and the same old subject turns strange and new (at 6:57 in the video).

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 9

Grading style can transform a subject too. His widely loved Guilin series re-imagines the karst in cyan tones, borrowing the spirit of ink-wash painting and the fantasy aesthetics of video games — many said they had never seen Guilin like this (at 7:53 in the video).

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 10

04 Connect with Reality, Society and the Times

The third way is to stamp your photos with their moment. Edward Burtynsky's aerials reveal humanity's impact — even damage — on nature, folding climate and environmental issues into the landscape and giving the pictures a readability far beyond check-in shots (at 8:40 in the video).

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 11

Thomas's own 'Unfinished Buildings of China' follows a similar logic: documenting a sharply defined social moment gives landscape photography historical value and public resonance; his 'Seeing China by Train' series connects landscape with reality the same way (at 9:07 in the video).

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 12

Timeliness also means unrepeatable: the window view of Nyingchi's blossoms had no such chance ten years ago; Namcha Barwa stands as ever, but the expressways and bridges below, the train in the foreground, the locals' clothes all proclaim 'right now'. The window frame shot before the railway opened — a modernized Tibetan village outside — can never be taken again. That is what unique means (at 11:01 in the video).

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 13
1. Invest time, energy and money — scouting unfashionable spots, waiting for extreme weather, walking where others don't is a moat in itself; 2. Read widely, study others' creativity, then forge your own ideas and grading — props and a city's temperament are both openings; 3. Let landscape converse with the times: social issues and singular moments give photos an unrepeatable historical value; 4. The opposite of sameness is not gimmickry but carrying your own observation and experience.

HD video:

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV19M411z7qu/

PPT

How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 14 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 15 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 16 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 17 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 18 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 19 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 20 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 21 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 22 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 23 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 24 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 25 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 26 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 27 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 28 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 29 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 30 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 31 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 32 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 33 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 34 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 35 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 36 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 37 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 38 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 39 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 40 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 41 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 42 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 43 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 44 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 45 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 46 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 47 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 48 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 49 How Can Landscape Photography Avoid Being Repetitive? Some of My Thoughts · Fig. 50

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