A Landscape Photographer's 2022 Portfolio

My 2022 landscape photography portfolio is here.

The portfolio contains nearly a hundred photos, including multiple series such as "The Qinghai-Tibet Railway Outside the Window" (《车窗外的青藏铁路》), "Glimmer" (《微光》), and "Living in Harmony with Nature" (《与自然共生》), along with scattered travel landscape photos.

Happy 2023 New Year to everyone — may you see even more beautiful scenery~

Video

▶ Watch the video tutorial on Bilibili

This is the illustrated companion to the video above. The four-minute year-end compilation has no narration — only music and close to a hundred photographs — but Thomas wrote an on-screen note for each of his three series. Below, following the video's own structure — the year's best ten, the three series On the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, Faint Light in Unfinished Buildings and Living with Nature, and the "Others" travel landscapes — the notes are transcribed and paired with keyframe screenshots, so you can take in the framework here and then watch the full set.

Start at the beginning. Captured at 0:01 in the video, this is the compilation's first title card, "BEST 10" — Thomas opens with the ten photographs he was happiest with in 2022 before moving through the series. The running order is: BEST 10 (0:01), On the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (0:28), Faint Light in Unfinished Buildings (1:06), Living with Nature (1:37), Others (2:37), and a New Year greeting (4:20).

01 BEST 10: The Year's Best Ten

The opening ten span several threads of the year: karst peaks stacked in layers of mist, a mountain village seen from above at sunrise, a road winding through autumn woods, a high-rise at night with a single lit window, a deep-blue ice cave, and two views through a train window — peach blossoms beneath snow mountains on one side, snow peaks at the end of a golden grassland on the other (from 0:02 to 0:18 in the video).

The last of the ten — the Potala Palace in morning light, peach blossoms blooming beneath snow mountains above a valley village — also foreshadow the themes of the series to come: the plateau, and the relationship between human settlement and nature (at 0:20 in the video).

02 On the Qinghai-Tibet Railway: Contemporary China Through a Train Window

The note for the first series appears at 0:28 in the video. Thomas writes: "In mid-2020, on a train to Golmud, I had the idea of portraying contemporary China through the window of a train. Only in today's China can a single mode of transport carry you across landscapes as varied as desert, plateau, forest, coast, city and countryside."

"In this body of work, outside the window there are beautiful natural landscapes as well as the landmarks of our era — pylons, highways, bridges, chemical plants, wind farms; inside and outside the carriage, ordinary people and their belongings appear too: road builders, railway staff, volunteer teachers, tourists, local residents." The sequence in the video (0:33 to 1:04) alternates exactly like that: grassland and snow mountains framed by the window, and masked passengers in the carriage gazing out.

The note closes: "These are new photographs from 2022; the book On the Qinghai-Tibet Railway is expected to be published by Zhejiang Photographic Press in 2023-2024."

03 Faint Light in Unfinished Buildings: The Other Side of the Property Boom

The note for the second series appears at 1:06: "China's rapid development has brought convenient infrastructure and a modern face to city and countryside alike. If China by Train shows the vigour of that development, Faint Light in Unfinished Buildings focuses on its by-product — abandoned, half-built housing — and tries to show the risks and problems left behind by the unchecked expansion of capital."

"In 2022 the series was shot across several stalled projects in Xi'an, Zhengzhou and Qingdao. Some of the buyers, having lost their income during the pandemic, had no choice but to move into the unfinished buildings." The photographs are correspondingly quiet: a dark tower with one or two windows lit, a single lamp in a bare concrete floor, a few figures standing beneath an empty building (from 1:12 to 1:35 in the video).

04 Living with Nature: Human Architecture Across Landscapes

The note for the third series appears at 1:37: "Human activity shapes nature, and nature in turn shapes the way we build and live. This series crosses polar regions, plateaus, volcanoes, oceans and high mountains to show human architecture under different geographical conditions, and its relationship with the environment around it."

"I have followed this subject since I first picked up a camera. These are the photographs added in 2022 — new work shot in China, plus earlier images re-edited and reprocessed. The book Living with Nature, collecting nearly ten years of this work, is expected to be published by Posts and Telecom Press in 2023." The images in this section (1:42 to 2:29) — a polar village of coloured houses on the snow, wind turbines in the desert, a hillside settlement, towns glowing at night — are concrete footnotes to that idea of buildings in dialogue with their surroundings.

05 Others: A Year on the Road, and a New Year Greeting

After the "Others" title card at 2:37 come the year's scattered travel landscapes: the light and lines of sand dunes, mist among karst peaks, a rainforest waterfall, neon streets, the Milky Way above rock pillars, a lone tree in snow, a river bridge at night in a mountain city, and two sets of ice caves — in one, a figure crouches with a lamp beneath the glowing blue ice (from 2:39 to 4:18 in the video).

The compilation ends at 4:20 on an autumn road, with the words "Thank you all — Happy New Year" across the frame — the same wish that opens this article: a happy 2023, and ever more beautiful landscapes ahead.

1. Nearly a hundred photographs from 2022 are presented as best ten, three series, then others — and the best ten already show the three threads of plateau, train window and human habitation; 2. On the Qinghai-Tibet Railway frames natural scenery alongside pylons, highways and wind farms, and ordinary people — road builders, railway staff, volunteer teachers — with the book due from Zhejiang Photographic Press in 2023-2024; 3. Faint Light in Unfinished Buildings focuses on stalled housing projects in Xi'an, Zhengzhou and Qingdao and on owners who, having lost income during the pandemic, moved into the unfinished shells; 4. Living with Nature crosses polar regions, plateaus, volcanoes, oceans and high mountains to record how human architecture relates to its environment, with a decade's work due as a book from Posts and Telecom Press in 2023.

HD video:

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV19M411h7st/

Photo Collection