Photographer Spotlight: Grace Ho

Landscape Category January 2021 Winner, taken in Phatthalung, Thailand, by Grace Ho, captioned, “Serene Morning At Phatthalung”

As ASIAN Geographic’s annual Images of Asia (IOA) 2021 Photo/Videography Competition looms closer, submissions to our IOA Monthly competition – the precursor to our annual event – are pouring in. We have received stunning photos across the categories, and are now featuring our monthly winners in an exclusive interview!

Below is our interview with Grace Ho, the IOA Monthly January 2021 Winner in the Landscape category.

AG: What is the story of your beginning and journey to creating great images?

My best friend Ujin gave me a hardcover photography book and there my photography journey began. He wanted to divert my stress from work and encourage me to pick up photography in the year 2013; he coached me the basic knowledge and technical aspects of photography, I learned to shoot in few genres including people, architecture, macro, long exposure, street photography, landscape and underwater photography.

After two years of shooting, I learned from Teacher Adam Tan on editing and how to “see” in photography. Teacher Adam “opened” up my eyes to see the beauty in my life. With their encouragement In the year 2016, I started to participate in international photography competitions.

AG: How would you define your style and concepts you enjoy exploring?

After years of shooting, my interest sharpened and focused more on capturing people and issues related to human elements. I enjoy the interaction of emotion, humanity, people lifestyle and mode of feeling between the subjects and myself. As a passionate photographer, I always consider photography a way to perpetuate a moment, with all the associated emotions and feeling.

AG: What is great photography to you, and are there any photographers you would like to work with?

To me, a good image tells a story, It will inspire the spectator’s feeling and emotion and encourages the viewers wanted to know more about the people, their cultures, or sceneries in different places through my lens.

I will feel great when the audience can feel and understand what is the messages that I trying to present through my works.

I am amazed at Sebastian Salgado’s works like “Genesis”, “workers” and so on, he is not capturing the “beautiful” images but the “real” images that reflected the reality and created awareness from the society on the situation and issue that he trying to show from his series of works.

The sense of humanity makes his works meaningful and I hope I could do the same in my photography path.

AG: What is your preferred imaging gear to work with and why?

Honestly, I do not have any preference for the brand as long as those gears suit my shooting requirement. I always believe that my mind my feel controlling the gears and not the gears controlling my mind. Currently, I’m using Nikon D850 and I frequently use 24-70mm lens as this setting give me very fast focusing and very good performance in low light condition as I always like to shoot human or street photography. Sometimes I will use Fuji XT3 with kit lens for my street shooting as the body is small and light in weight.

AG: What is the next Asian destination you’d like to explore and why?

I wish to go Tibet and exploring the ancient villages in China. I wish to explore the different culture and the lifestyle of Tibet and interested to know more about their belief, religion , architecture , the landscape also attractive to me.

AG: Can you share more about your current and upcoming projects?