Huibo Hou is a landscape photographer based in San Diego, California. Her interest in photography started back in 1999 and was rekindled in 2015. Passionate about landscape photography, especially in black and white, her work has been published in Lenswork Magazine and Black and White Magazine. You can visit her site here.

Huibo shoots mainly in her local area of San Diego, California, USA. Her work has won many awards including the Landscape & Nature category in Sony World Photography Awards 2018. In a recent interview she said " I am always excited to visit faraway places, but a lot of my work are from my local beaches. My top two special places in the US are Yellowstone National Park and Death Valley National Park, where the variety of photographic subjects is abundant and the possibilities to get creative are endless. "  She adds " I pre-plan so that I can be in the vicinity of the right place around the right time, then I leave everything else to instinctive response", which seems to me to be a lesson for us all. Her images have an originality for me in how she looks and she manages to resist the temptation to conform.

Working in some wilder spaces she is clear that there are rules photographers should follow and it is a good  guide to repeat those principles here :-

• Prioritize the well-being of nature over photography
• Educate yourself about the places you photograph
• Reflect on the possible impact of your actions
• Use discretion if sharing locations
• Know and follow rules and regulations
• Always follow Leave No Trace principles and strive to leave places better than you found them
• Actively promote and educate others about these principles.

Whilst her work is heavily post processed it is clear that she has a great clarity of vision and is able to see the potential in light. I feel that her black and white work demonstrates this best. She always shoots in colour however and converts her images to mono during processing. Nonetheless about 20% of her work remains in colour.

It is always great to discover new work that I like but sometimes difficult to see that work in exhibitions or books. Huibo Hou has no books published at this time , despite being in some magazines, and the work that she has exhibited has pretty much all been in America, although I get the feeling it may be more accessible in the UK before long.

You can see a Photo Masters interview with her here