Shooting Snow Mountains Without Leaving Home? A Landscape Photographer Shoots in Games Again

How should snow mountain photos be shot?

Why do lakes photograph less well than streams?

How can landscape photos be composed with more depth?

In today's photography tutorial, I'll take you on a virtual tour of the Daocheng Yading map in a game, sharing shooting techniques live.

Video

▶ Watch the video tutorial on Bilibili

This is the illustrated companion to the video above. Thomas visited the real Daocheng Yading in 2014 but left with regrets as the weather turned; this time, NetEase's game Justice (Nishuihan) recreated Yading's landscapes in high fidelity, so he tours the map with a landscape photographer's eye — choosing foregrounds for snow-mountain scenes, using streams as leading lines, shooting alpenglow on the peaks, and finding elevated bird's-eye viewpoints. Keyframe screenshots throughout, unpacked below.

Start with an overview. This frame from 3:48 in the video: alpenglow gilding the summit, riverside flowers as the foreground, and a wide angle taking in the whole mountain — this single in-game photo-mode shot condenses nearly every technique in the episode: leading lines, foreground, layering and timing.

01 Lake or Stream: Choosing a Foreground for Snow-Mountain Scenes

Open the map and pick Yading. Most travelers head straight for the high-altitude lakes like Milk Lake and Pearl Lake. But from a photographer's perspective, their shores are all glacier debris and jumbled rocks — messy, uncooperative foregrounds (at 1:04 in the video).

For snow-mountain scenes he recommends a stream instead: the stream itself is a superb leading line, and its banks usually carry meadows, forest and even wildflowers — suddenly the foreground options multiply (at 1:28 in the video). Enough theory; let's head into the field.

02 First Stop: The S-Curve of a Stream

On site, a stream runs straight toward distant snow mountains and a Tibetan temple. Set the tripod as far into the stream as possible — even with one leg in the water — and the stream draws an S-curve through the frame, leading to the forest and temple midground and up to the distant peaks: a classic composition (at 2:06 in the video).

While exploring, remember to turn around now and then — the mountains behind you may be just as beautiful. A bridge along the way is also perfect: the stream leads the eye to twin snow summits; from the other side of the bridge, the stream ends at a village with small houses beneath the mountain, a different mood entirely (at 2:38 in the video).

03 Alpenglow: Flower Foregrounds, Wide and Telephoto

At sunset the peaks turn gold — alpenglow is the moment to shoot. Look for flowers along the river as a foreground, go even wider to take in the entire mountain, and the composition sings (at 3:35 in the video).

On the other side, flowers, small houses with their lights on and distant peaks call for a telephoto: the farther mountain is compressed by the longer lens, giving the classic layering of village in front, summit behind (at 3:57 in the video).

Try another mountain: this one wears clouds at its base while the summit still glows, with purple flowers up front — tighten the framing slightly and you get a composition full of beauty and depth (at 4:26 in the video). One click, and the sky has turned a riot of red clouds.

04 Climb Higher: Layering and Bird's-Eye Viewpoints

Climb a little higher and the payoff is immediate: from up here you keep the flower foreground but gain the distant river and grasslands, an open vista with superb layering. In the field, look for slopes like this and shoot down from a modest elevation (at 4:54 in the video).

Refine the position too: the first angle catches a bare dirt road — move slightly forward and drop the camera lower so the road fades from the frame (at 5:31 in the video). At this hour the Milky Way, evening storm clouds and the snow mountain share one frame; and the classic telephoto pairing of a Buddhist stupa against distant peaks is not to be missed (at 5:52 in the video).

For advanced hikers and climbers, the map hides elevated bird's-eye viewpoints: from a high point over the U-shaped valley you can capture the river bend, the fields inside it and the peaks beyond; follow a river's leading line toward a distant lake and mountains; or from the stupa hill above the lake, use the water as midground against layered summits (at 6:13 in the video).

05 More Maps: Chinese-Style Virtual Landscapes

That wraps the landscape-photography tour of the Yading map. Beyond Yading, Justice's other maps — Hangzhou, Dali, Sanqingshan — are beautifully and distinctively Chinese, and worth exploring on your own (at 7:19 in the video). Virtual worlds are becoming a new stage for landscape photography: different vantage points, the same photographic logic.

1. Think twice before making a plateau lake your main subject — glacier rubble makes messy foregrounds; find a stream instead, with its natural leading line and meadows, forest and flowers along the banks; 2. Put the camera in the water: one tripod leg in the stream turns the current into an S-curve aimed at the midground and the peaks; 3. Alpenglow offers two takes — wide for the whole mountain, telephoto to compress village and summit — with flowers as foreground throughout; 4. For advanced shots, climb to bird's-eye viewpoints: U-shaped valleys, river leading lines, and stupa-plus-lake midgrounds double the layering.