The Most Beautiful Landscape Photos of 2022! Appreciating the Winning Works of the Landscape Photographer of the Year Contest~

What creative trends emerged in nature landscape photography in 2022?

What stunning landscapes did photographers at home and abroad capture this year?

In today's works-appreciation video, Thomas will share some winning works from the 2022 International Landscape Photographer of the Year.

Video

▶ Watch the video tutorial on Bilibili

This is the fully illustrated companion to the video above. Thomas turned the 11-minute review of the 2022 International Landscape Photographer of the Year (ILPOTY) winners into text and paired it with keyframe screenshots — several Chinese photographers placed this year, but the point is not the rankings so much as the four creative trends these strong images reveal: seeing the large in the small, the many ways to shoot a desert, forests in rain and fog, and the fresh answers offered by moonlight and aerials. Skim it here for the framework, then go back to the video to study each image.

Start with a finished frame. Captured at 1:14 in the video, this image by French photographer Nicolas Raspiengeas looks like a snow mountain at first glance — in fact it is only a corner of ice. It opens the first trend of the episode, seeing the large in the small: a tiny scene, yet genuinely striking.

01 The Large in the Small: Finding Beauty in Tiny Scenes

Thomas sees many of this year's winners as exercises in seeing the large in the small — drawing singular beauty from the tiny things around us. When it snows we all head for the woods, yet Eric Bennett went his own way and photographed autumn leaves knocked down by the snow: a white ground scattered with multicoloured leaves, a beauty all its own (at 1:27 in the video). Another frame takes just a small step in a stream, sculpting its light in post and building the image on curves; the thick carpets of leaves that pile up on autumn streets and forest floors hold textures and details worth discovering too (at 1:55 in the video).

There are wave details caught with a telephoto; Klaus Axelsen's frame is simply a slow-shutter study of water — roughly 0.2 to 0.5 seconds, not a very long exposure — recording its motion, set off against strangely shaped rocks, and it looks wonderful (at 2:19 in the video); and ice textures brought out by shaping the light in post. Small scenes like these are a rich source of ideas.

02 Many Ways to Shoot a Desert: Soft Light, Backlight, High Key and Warm-Cool Layers

The second trend is the sheer variety of desert work. One photographer used the indirect light of dawn, just before or after sunrise, for a very soft desert (at 2:52 in the video); Chinese photographer Tony Wang used the backlight of the hour or two around sunrise and sunset to catch the texture and shadows of the sand (at 3:05 in the video). Others shot from a high angle to record the traces the wind leaves on the sand, or used a very wide lens for the light and texture at sunset; Liu Bai turned a telephoto on desert vegetation and the textures around it.

Benjamin Briones Grandi's frame is high-key, immaculate and unified in colour (at 3:48 in the video). The same desert can be handled with tonal contrast, with warm-cool contrast, or in this clean high-key manner — the approaches are endless. His second image runs from dark to bright and cool to warm as it moves from foreground to distance — a collaboration between capture and post — finished by a moon as the final accent; the layering is gentle, yet supremely comfortable and harmonious (at 4:03 in the video).

03 Forests: Rain and Fog, Upward Convergence, Mid-Telephoto Compression

Forests were everywhere among this year's winners, and there is much to learn. Most accomplished photographers shoot them in rain or fog — in sunshine the light inside a forest turns chaotic and the trees fail to separate into layers; fog naturally erases the background trees and the depth appears by itself (at 4:41 in the video). For angle, many shoot upward from low down so the branches converge, creating a strong pull of converging lines (at 5:01 in the video).

Forests also call for mid-telephoto focal lengths: they compress a broad swathe of distant trees into one frame, packed tightly together into a pleasing rhythm of lines and colour blocks (at 5:12 in the video). Tony Wang's frame follows the same idea — nothing very wide, but a mid-telephoto catching trees through thin fog, with the front-to-back depth working especially well in snow. Trees can also serve as a simple foreground, particularly clean, oddly shaped dead branches; Gheorghe Popa photographed a frozen winter lake from the air, where the ice textures and black branches form a striking black-and-white contrast (at 5:58 in the video).

Roberto Pavic's frame works a warm-cool contrast: golden autumn foliage in fog, shot at the blue hour and with white balance nudged a little toward blue in post, so the interplay of warm and cool makes the picture sing (at 6:27 in the video). Max Rive, meanwhile, is a master of the tree as foreground — this particular tree is so remarkable that photographing it alone is enough (at 6:45 in the video).

The decisive weather for forests remains rain and fog: mist cleanly separates the trees you want from the clutter behind them. Japanese photographer Sho Hoshino's frame uses heavy snow and fog — and in China's north-east, across the north, or on Huangshan in snow, forests like this are there to be found (at 7:12 in the video). A more traditional forest-bridge-stream scene may require wading boots or waders to get into the water and out to the middle for the best angle (at 7:29 in the video). What to study is how these photographers use fog and light, and how precise selections in post make the front-to-back layering feel so natural.

One frame was not shot in fog but shortly after sunrise: the foreground remains unlit while only a sliver of the background catches the sun. The worst time for forests is midday — the entire floor is lit and everything reflects, and the scene turns messy (at 8:16 in the video).

04 Moonlight and Aerials: Another Answer to Cloudless Skies

In the next set the photographers work by moonlight, sometimes pairing the moon with dawn twilight. Moonlight suits landscape work remarkably well: winter often brings featureless clear skies that look flat at sunrise and sunset, yet shoot the same scene under the moon and you gain stars as well — the sky is no longer a blank but filled with moon and stars, rich and alive (at 8:53 in the video). William Preite's moonlit snow village is a case in point.

Then come a frame that includes the moon just at sunrise; the salt lakes of China's far north-west, where similar classic compositions can be made; an aerial of a salt lake that shines, and an aerial of lava that is simply spectacular (at 9:25 in the video). Max Rive's frame uses the winding curve of a river as foreground and shapes the composition from the air (at 9:41 in the video); there is also a classic foreground-middle-background arrangement made stronger by special weather and a beautiful foreground, a traditional seascape shot ultra-wide and low for exaggerated rock textures beneath mist and a sky full of cloud, and a final dramatic aerial (at 9:58 in the video).

1. See the large in the small: a corner of ice, leaves on snow, one small step in a stream, water at 0.2-0.5 s against strange rocks — tiny scenes can still stun; 2. Deserts have endless approaches: soft dawn light, backlight around sunrise and sunset for texture and shadow, high angles for wind traces, telephoto for vegetation, unified high-key colour, or a dark-to-bright, cool-to-warm progression capped by a moon; 3. Forests hinge on rain and fog — mist hides the background and builds layers; shoot upward so branches converge, compress dense woods with a mid-telephoto, pair blue hour with a bluer white balance for warm-cool contrast, and avoid midday; 4. Don't give up on clear winter skies: moonlight brings moon and stars, and aerials of salt lakes, lava and river bends offer new answers.

HD video:

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Ue4y1M7iA/

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