Detailed explanations

Chu, a Chongqing native, has a habit of planning ahead. In order to improve his English for the college entrance exam in 2009, he spent four months reciting an 800-page English dictionary. He studied computer science at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore with a full scholarship for his bachelor's degree.

In 2011, Chu bought his first digital single-lens reflex camera. When he was an exchange student at the Technical University of Munich during his sophomore year, he took the opportunity to travel around Europe with his friends, and the beautiful scenery in the Alps triggered his love for both the outdoors and landscape photography.

In 2012, one of Chu's photos was selected as an editor's choice in the National Geographic Photo Contest, which motivated him to pursue the medium even more avidly.

From the judging panel to previous winning images and their photographers, Chu always takes great care to study the details before he takes part in any competition.

In 2014, he started to work as an engineer in Singapore and a year later, he began to run a Sina Weibo and WeChat account to share his photography skills and experience.

"You need to keep updating your social media and interact with fans so that you can be a key opinion leader in the field, which will attract more cooperation opportunities," he says.

After working for three years, Chu decided to quit his job and become a full-time photographer, and returned to Chongqing. He says he made ends meet by doing photography-related work, such as running training courses, doing commercial photography, and organizing related trips.

Within a few years, he became an established photographer, publishing a book in 2018 about the postproduction of landscape photos. A decade ago the longest trip he made was the 700 km from Chongqing to Xi'an in Shaanxi province, but now he has climbed "snowy mountains up to 6,000 meters high and explored caves 300 meters underground".

He is open to sharing his experiences and regularly offers tips on his social media accounts. He once recalled a dangerous descent down a Swiss mountain in stormy weather and, in a recent post on WeChat, how he goes about photographing a sunrise or sunset by using a software that can predict the exact times they occur.

Drones are also a tool that Chu employs. "Sometimes I'll use a drone to take a photo from an angle that I cannot achieve in person, or to find the right spot from where to take my photos before I start climbing or walking," he says.

Use of color is another area that defines his work, as he believes that colors can represent emotions, and he adjusts the color to match the emotion he wants to convey.

Chu already has made plans to return to Greenland in October and shoot more photos of its far-flung communities and examine the residents' relationship with the environment. Besides the polar region, his interests also include the snowy mountains of Pakistan and China.

"As a landscape photographer, you always want to capture the shot that nobody has ever seen," he explains, concluding, "or find a new angle or way of depicting something that's already well-known."

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