Dr. Joseph Wu is a Birmingham physician, a father of three, and a landscape photographer who finds beauty in the quiet corners of the world. What began as a casual curiosity in 2014—just playing around with a camera—quickly turned into an unexpected passion. A landscape photography workshop in Iceland lit the spark, and he’s been exploring the world one frame at a time ever since.
Since then, he has sought out remote, visually rich places—Tasmania, Tunisia, Iceland, Tokyo, Prague, Budapest, Taiwan, Istanbul, Ireland, Antarctica, and beyond—capturing light, texture, and place with precision and care.
He often builds trips around the pursuit of a single image, sometimes adjusting plans entirely to chase the right conditions. For last year’s total solar eclipse, he organized a trip with fellow photographers—friends he’d met through workshops—who flew in from around the country to meet in Austin. When cloud cover threatened their original site in Texas Hill Country, the group packed into a rental SUV and drove overnight to Arkansas in search of clearer skies—arriving just in time. Wu vividly remembers the moment just before totality when the temperature dropped, the wind shifted, and the sky darkened.
“Everyone around you gasps,” Wu says. “That kind of awe stays with you.”
Out of all his travel destinations, Lebanon may have surprised him most. There he found unexpected beauty in a country where coastal cities, ancient ruins, and snowy mountains lie just an hour apart.
“It wasn’t a place I expected to fall in love with,” he says. “But I did. The people are so warm and kind despite all that they’ve been through.”
Wu prefers destinations that fly under the radar. Instead of Paris, he passed through the airport en route to Tunis. Instead of Sydney, he explored Tasmania by road—twice.
“I like places that aren’t overexposed—where I can take my time, go in the off-season, and really see what’s there.”
He travels with both digital and film gear—medium-format cameras like the Pentax 67 and Mamiya 7ii, Nikon bodies for wildlife and night photography, and carefully chosen film stocks. The Canadian Rockies remain his favorite destination to photograph—any season, any year.
Though he’s always leaned analytical—he once dreamed of becoming an engineer—photography has offered a creative outlet that complements his work in medicine.
“In a way, it’s problem-solving,” he says. “You’re figuring out how to frame something, what settings to use, how to make it visually pleasing. It taps into a completely different part of my brain, and I think that balance helps me be more present in both roles.”
“Photography has sharpened how I see the world,” he adds. “It helps me pay attention—to light, to timing, and to what a place is trying to say.”
“I like places that aren’t overexposed—where I can take my time, go in the off-season, and really see what’s there.”