Such a Fairyland in Jiangxi! How a Photographer Made a Man-Made Spot Look Dreamlike

How do you turn a slightly cluttered man-made scenic spot into a dreamy fairyland image?

In today's video tutorial, Thomas teaches you on location how to use framing and composition to avoid the unfavorable elements in the scene, ultimately capturing a stunning shot of a 'floating golden pavilion' in the real world.

Video

▶ Watch the video tutorial on Bilibili

This is the fully illustrated companion to the video above. Thomas visited Wunüzhou, a brand-new man-made scenic area in Wuyuan, Jiangxi — a fake-antique town that looks downright cluttered by day, yet he walked away with a dreamlike night frame straight out of a fantasy novel, a real-life "Jade Chamber". The video walks the whole process — night over day, two location moves, two sets of camera settings and a time blend — all unpacked here with keyframe screenshots.

01 Night as a Curtain: The First Trade-off in a Man-made Scenic Area

Wunüzhou opened only this year, sitting right on the edge of the Wuyuan county town with a high-speed rail line and ordinary apartment blocks all around. The daytime aerial at 1:22 makes the problem obvious: from a high angle the fake-antique buildings, county housing and a sports field all lie bare in one frame — genuinely cluttered. A man-made scenic area lacks the filtering power of natural landscape, and by day there is almost no hiding these distractors.

Thomas's first trade-off was to let night do the work (at 1:44 in the video): the area's core attraction is its night scene anyway. Once darkness falls and the surroundings go black, only the lit zones remain in the frame — the cluttered buildings and the rail line vanish into the night, leaving nothing but glitter and glow (the aerial comparison at 1:53 makes this immediately clear).

02 The Floating Golden Pavilion: From Genshin's Jade Chamber to Reality

The second trade-off was finding a subject worth shooting. Thomas locked onto the golden pavilion on the lake the moment he entered: the whole structure appears to float, held up by a single pillar beneath. He jokes that such a suspended building used to exist only in novels or in Genshin Impact — the Jade Chamber over Liyue Harbor is exactly this kind of floating pavilion (at 2:33 in the video). Seeing one appear in real life, a photographer cannot resist.

The designers clearly understand photographers too: the supporting pillar is painted with a ring of silvery reflective material to bounce back the ambient light and stay unnoticed; and at night two water curtains drop around it, almost completely hiding the pillar (2:47-3:11 in the video). The strategy was settled — build the composition around this "flying pavilion": night scene, water curtains and lake reflections (at 3:12 in the video).

03 Composition: a Stone-bollard Foreground and the Advanced Bridge Position

The first position was on the lakeshore. At 3:21 in the video, Thomas breaks down the photo he shot there days earlier: the bottom takes a layer of stone bollards and chains as a highly textured foreground, the middle is the lake surface, and behind floats the golden pavilion with lit buildings in the distance. He kept burst-shooting until a boat glided into the best spot, then strengthened the mood in post (3:50-3:58 in the video).

But this position had a regret: behind the area stands a very tall tower, the Baoyu Pagoda, flanked by pavilions, none of which fit the frame (at 4:09 in the video). Golden pavilion in front, tall tower behind — getting both into one photo would make the depth far more impressive. So he moved across the lake to a bridge: at 4:31 the floating pavilion and the distant pagoda line up perfectly, with buildings marching in rows between — and that is where the night's actual shoot would happen.

04 Waiting for the Moment: Artificial Mist and the Falling Water Curtains

With the position settled, the rest is waiting. Toward evening the lakeside releases mist for a fairyland effect — and the video lifts the curtain at 5:01: the mist comes from sprinklers hidden in the grass, yet the result is dreamy enough. You also wait for the pavilion's water curtains to drop and fully cover the pillar (at 5:11). In the blue-hour frame at 4:52, mist, water curtains and the lit tower and pavilion are all in place — just waiting for the sky to darken a little more.

05 Two Sets of Settings and a Time Blend: Mist and Boat in One Frame

The first set of settings serves the mist and the pavilion: ISO 100, f/8, exposure compensation straight at -2, shutter on auto at about 1/8 s (at 5:17 in the video). Pulling two stops keeps the lights from blowing out — clipped night lights are unrecoverable, while shadows can safely be lifted in post. Interval shooting runs alongside, firing a frame every 5-10 seconds (at 5:40): the mist over the lake never stops changing, nobody knows which moment looks best, and a deep pile of frames both locks in the peak moment and stocks material for a time blend.

Then he noticed boats gliding across the lake — a boat in frame adds real mood, but shooting one demands different settings: ISO 800, f/4, -0.7 EV, shutter around 1/40 s (at 6:13 in the video). At that shutter speed a slow-moving boat stays sharp, and by continuously capturing different mist shapes and different boats, he merged everything into a single image with a time blend (at 6:35) — the best mist layer as the base with the best boat blended in. The final frame holds it all: the pavilion behind falling water, the pagoda in the distance, and one little boat — utterly dreamlike.

1. When a man-made scenic area cannot hide its cluttered background by day, let night do it: in darkness only the lit zones remain in frame; 2. Find the subject worth shooting first — floating pavilion, water curtains, lake reflections — then move positions to pull the distant pagoda into the same frame for depth; 3. Waiting is part of composition: artificial mist, falling water curtains and an entering boat all take time; 4. Run two settings, each to its strength: ISO 100, f/8, -2 EV intervals for clean mist frames, ISO 800, f/4, -0.7 EV at 1/40 s to freeze boats, then a time blend gathers every best element into one image.