Share
↑ Tree This was taken during powerful snowstorms that swept through Utah. The lone tree was another location I wanted to come back to, but the later we stayed, the heavier the snowfall became. I was shocked that the drone was able to fly so well under such adverse conditions.
Reuben Wu’s Otherworldly Landscapes Were Shot with an iPhone
Words by Bill Sawalich, Images by Reuben Wu
Reuben Wu has a habit of turning personal passions into creative careers. First as a designer, then a musician, and now a photographer, Wu’s artistic drive knows no bounds. His hauntingly beautiful photographs juxtapose unnatural light with the natural landscape. He is equipment agnostic, using whatever device best serves his vision, including everything from drones to LED cube lights, fiber optics to medium format digital cameras.
For a recent photo project, Wu stepped out of his comfort zone once again by shooting night landscapes entirely with an iPhone. The experience was both a challenge and an awakening, allowing him to expand his vision while minimizing his camera to just a smartphone.
The project, titled “The Inner Landscape,” showcases the photographic capabilities of the iPhone 15 Pro in Wu’s skillful hands. Made in southern Utah over the course of a week last summer, the project was shot entirely on the iPhone and culminated in an exhibition of 40 x 50-inch prints. Given the 48-megapixel sensor of the iPhone 15 Pro, big, beautiful prints are no big surprise. But working with a smartphone in lieu of a typical professional camera does present some challenges.
“I wouldn’t call it fully manual,” Wu says, “but one trick not many people know about is that night mode will actually go for 30 seconds if it’s not in motion. If it’s locked off on a tripod, the phone will know it’s not moving and allow you to move the night mode slider to maximum at 30 seconds, provided it’s dark enough. That’s just computational photography. The beauty of the native camera app is it’s so simple and elegant.”
Thinking Different
To paraphrase an old Apple idea, Wu did have to “think different” working with the smartphone. He won’t abandon cameras in favor of phones any time soon, but he does think of the iPhone as a new kind of tool that can be easily incorporated into his arsenal.
“If I had my iPhone and I was in an incredible place and I couldn’t get my regular camera, I would be okay,” he says, “The iPhone’s not a replacement for the bigger cameras. It’s just different.”
For “The Inner Landscape,” anything was possible in the sense that his vision remained uncompromised. Wu chose smaller, more intimate compositions than the grand vistas in much of his work, and the results are deliberately disorienting.
“I think that’s helped by the fact that it’s shot at night where the only thing that’s illuminated is the thing you can see and everything in the background is shrouded in shadow,” he explains.
“With this series I wanted to go more intimate, I wanted to take away the recognizable bits and blur those edges of scale and reality.”
Wu had total freedom to realize his vision. He showed them his concept and they approved. “I’m extremely lucky that I am commissioned to create work which looks exactly the same as my personal work,” Wu says.
Shooting with the iPhone while light painting night landscapes proved to be a time consuming process.
“I usually spend a few hours per image,” Wu says. “Maybe I’ll do two images in a night, sometimes three if we’re really going for it. Especially with the iPhone, there’s a lot more trial and error involved. It doesn’t work the same way as a traditional camera does.”
Being There
For a photographer used to working with bigger and more complex camera systems that allow greater flexibility, was the iPhone frustrating as a capture device?
“No,” Wu says, “it was very interesting to just try different things in the field. There was one image where I was running up and down this steep hill, waving this laser wire around under a long exposure and seeing what we were going to get. It’s very exploratory and that’s kind of what I enjoy about these shoots. When I’m in a certain space and a certain kind of flow state I’m able to work in a way which is quite creative and quite exploratory.”
It’s that exploration, the sense of discovery, that propels Wu to each new project.
“First and foremost,” he says, “I’m passionate about exploring new places. And the tool that I use to explore them with and to document them with is the camera. My passion is being there, to hike into these places and to try these different things and get creative.”
Wu draws inspiration from a variety of sources, including the cinematic styles of photographer Gregory Crewdson and the filmmakers David Lynch and Steven Spielberg.
“One of the first inspirations for this project was doing Gregory Crewdson in the desert,” Wu says, “where you take this unearthly light and put it somewhere it completely doesn’t belong. I think that’s the beauty of this look, this aesthetic: that it doesn’t make sense. I’m also a big fan of David Lynch. I definitely feel that the work is kind of like a combination of David Lynch and Gregory Crewdson. And Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Steven Spielberg was one of my earliest inspirations and it’s very similar.”
Crossing Over
A genuine multi-disciplinary artist, it was while he was touring the world with his band that Wu realized not only how wonderful it was to explore interesting places with a camera, but that in fact his primary passion might actually be photography. In 2011 he relocated to Chicago and began pursuing photography — both commercial and fine art — full time. Soon thereafter it took over and has been his primary artistic focus for a decade. Just last year Wu formally left Ladytron, the band he cofounded in 1999.
“In 2013 I brought all my negatives over from the UK,” Wu says, “and I started thinking about — rather than single standalone images — I’m going to start thinking about bodies of work and series of work, and how to edit my images into a coherent set. That’s how I learned to think of my work in a bigger, more cohesive kind of storytelling way.”
With photography, Wu has been able to turn his dreams into reality. It’s a theme in his life and work, in fact: the unreal being made real. While his next project is yet to be determined, it’s certain to include experimentation at its core.
“I definitely want to continue my creative trajectory and experiment with different tools, different techniques and different concepts,” Wu says. “The iPhone performs so well as a camera that I’m sure I would enjoy creating more new work with it. I think a lot of people equate all of my work to a certain technique or tool, but a lot of time it’s the aesthetic. And any way I can achieve that aesthetic, I’ll try a different method.”
See more of Reuben Wu’s work at reubenwu.com.
2024.01
Table of Contents
- Paul Nicklen on Keeping the Wild in Wildlife Photography
- Why Ansel Adams Still Inspires (& Confounds) Photographers Today
- Reuben Wu’s Otherworldly Landscapes Were Shot with an iPhone
- How to Develop Style in Outdoor Photography
- What Photographers Can Learn from Fish
- 3 Ways to Give Your Photos More Depth
- What’s In Wildlife Photographer Anupam Thombre’s Camera Bag?
- Why Monterey Bay Is Great for Photography
- How This Incredible Image of Tiny Diatoms Was Captured