THOMAS CHU PHOTO

Photography Tutorial · 2024-01-07

Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~

In today's appreciation of excellent photography works, Thomas will share 5 of my favorite winners of the Hasselblad Masters competition.

The Hasselblad Masters has a long history, a strong panel of judges, and great influence in the industry.

Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 1

So what inspiration can these award-winning Hasselblad Masters' photographic creations give us?

The 2024 album-grade weekly calendar "Seeing the World 2024" (《看见世界2024》), which collects Thomas's works from the past two years, is now available on Taobao. Everyone is welcome to visit the Posts & Telecom Press Taobao store to purchase!

Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 2

Appreciation video

▶ Watch the video tutorial on Bilibili

This is the illustrated companion to the video above. The Hasselblad Masters is one of photography's most influential contests, and Thomas picks five laureates across its history whose lessons he values most — from the darkroom craft of black and white to the ink-wash mood of Chinese landscape — closing with a guide to entering the contest yourself. Their representative works appear in full in the gallery below.

The five come from Indonesia, the Netherlands, the United States (a former landscape painter), Australia and China — yet they share one striking trait: all draw nourishment from the painting traditions of their own homelands (the first photographer's profile card appears at 1:02 in the video).

Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 3

01 Indonesia: Darkroom Craft in Black and White

The first is Hengki Koentjoro, the Indonesian winner of the 2014 Masters in Landscape/Nature, a master of black and white. A fine monochrome demands detail exactly where it matters and darkness where it does not: the forest's side shadows are burned further so the tangled vegetation vanishes, while in a waterfall study the stream is lifted and the surrounding rock darkened until hierarchy is unmistakable (at 1:17 in the video).

Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 4

Monochrome also enjoys a unique post-processing freedom: push brightness dramatically and it still feels natural, because our eyes have never seen a black-and-white world — apply the same moves to color and it instantly looks fake. That is why in his prints the sky can sit darker than the water, the light source suppressed while the lit surface glows, without a hint of dissonance. The darkroom offers far more room in black and white (at 2:41 in the video).

02 Netherlands and the United States: Landscapes Born of Painting Schools

The second is Lars van de Goor, the 2016 Landscape laureate from the Netherlands, who shoots almost exclusively Dutch forests. Anyone familiar with the Dutch painters will spot the Hobbema-like avenues — but his treatment of "air" is finer still: against the grey-white that misty overcast should be, he tints fog yellow, teal or blue, then restores the plants to natural color with HSL and selections, adding a warm-cold separation on top of the tonal one (at 4:18 in the video).

Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 5 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 6

The third, Benjamin Everett, came to photography from landscape painting (his profile card at 5:44 in the video). "Constructed, layered" describes his frames best: distant peaks and near glaciers resolve into a dozen strata — blurred grass, midground, plains, cloud, sky — receding like a print. His Icelandic black-sand waves rely on time blends too: an hour of continuous shooting, only the finest wave layers kept (at 5:54).

Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 7 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 8

03 Australia: High-Key Funfields in Cyan and Orange

The fourth, Australia's Ben Thomas, points his camera at seaside amusement parks, cities and buildings back home. Under perpetually clear skies his images turn naturally high-key: shadows lifted until nothing dies to black, medium-high saturation, and a consistent pairing of cyan-blue against pink-orange that feels effortlessly pleasant (at 7:34 in the video).

Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 9 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 10

Inside vast settings he places a single tiny figure, faintly cartoon-like — a style echoing the painter Edward Hopper. Pictorialism began in the nineteenth century, but today's photographers borrow from film and painting more than ever, finding flavor in the most ordinary departure-hall scenes (at 8:53 in the video).

04 China: Ink-Way Scrolls of Mountain and Mist

The last is a Chinese photographer shaped by traditional Chinese painting and the pictorial lineage of Lang Jingshan. His winning series unfurls like an ancient handscroll — odd pines, emerald cypress, distant peaks lost in mist, every bit the mood of shan-shui ink painting (the awarded series at 9:12 in the video). Later, with a Hasselblad X2D 100C medium format, he carried the style forward at extreme resolution — format, grading and mist-and-mountain framing all conspiring toward ink-wash (at 10:11).

Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 11 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 12

05 The Lesson: Root Your Photography at Home

The five leave Thomas with one overriding lesson: in an era producing hundreds of millions of images a day, landscape photography has left pure documentation behind — for that, video is the better medium. A landscape photographer is not a surveillance camera at a scenic spot, but someone presenting the world as they see it, through cultivation and taste. And all five are rooted in their own countries and painting traditions: you know your homeland's moment best, and understand its art most deeply (at 10:13 in the video).

If you have three camera-made images you believe in, watch for the next Hasselblad Masters: six categories — Landscape, Architecture, Portrait, Street, Art and Youth — each crowning one Master with a Hasselblad medium-format mirrorless body, two XCD lenses and a 5,000-euro creative fund (part of the jury at 12:02, spanning the Hasselblad Foundation, Foam Photography Museum, Getty and Magnum). Note the rule: photos must come from a camera — any brand, but no phones or drones.

Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 13 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 14
1. Black and white offers the widest grading freedom — bold tonal moves still read natural, and darkroom craft is half the medium's life; 2. Fog need not be grey — tint the air, then restore your subject with selections, the pictorial landscaper's sharpest tool; 3. Layering is the skeleton of a landscape: foreground to sky receding plane by plane, with time blends amassing material when needed; 4. Stay rooted: photograph the land you know best and find your visual language in your own painting tradition.

HD video:

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1EN4y14783/

Works appreciation

Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 15 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 16 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 17 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 18 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 19 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 20 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 21 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 22 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 23 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 24 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 25 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 26 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 27 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 28 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 29 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 30 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 31 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 32 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 33 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 34 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 35 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 36 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 37 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 38 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 39 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 40 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 41 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 42 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 43 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 44 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 45 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 46 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 47 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 48 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 49 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 50 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 51 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 52 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 53 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 54 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 55 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 56 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 57 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 58 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 59 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 60 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 61 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 62 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 63 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 64 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 65 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 66 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 67 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 68 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 69 Hasselblad Masters Appreciation! My 5 Favorite Winners of the Hasselblad Masters Competition~ · Fig. 70

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