The Architecture Photography Awards 2026 Photographer of the Year, Chi Ho Gary Ng, has developed a visual language in which architecture becomes far more than a record of buildings.
Geometry creates order. Light transforms space. Human presence introduces scale, emotion and narrative.
Gary describes this philosophy simply as three interconnected elements: “Lines, Light, Life.” For him, these form the foundation of an approach that moves between monumental architecture, intricate façades, fleeting patterns of light and the people who inhabit the spaces he photographs.
Named Photographer of the Year at the Architecture Photography Awards 2026, Gary becomes the first photographer from Hong Kong and Asia to receive the APA title.
His success at APA 2026 was not defined by a single photograph. His work was recognized across multiple categories, revealing a remarkably consistent photographic language applied to very different architectural environments.
Gary’s relationship with visual art began with drawing before he discovered photography in primary school, experimenting with his father’s old cameras.
One of the earliest architectural subjects to capture his attention was Lai Tak Tsuen, a public housing estate in Hong Kong known for its cylindrical atriums. As a secondary school student in Causeway Bay, Gary repeatedly photographed the estate, fascinated by how its geometry and dramatic vertical perspectives could transform a familiar environment into something abstract and almost disorienting.
In 2017, he began sharing architectural photography through his @garyfive Instagram account while studying law. Photography became a creative counterpoint to university life, giving him a reason to slow down and observe his surroundings.
Electives in architectural history and design further developed his interest in the relationship between buildings and urban identity, gradually shaping a photographic language centred on geometry, light and human experience.
Gary describes growing up in Hong Kong as living in an “open-air museum of architecture.”
It is a city where East and West overlap, heritage buildings exist beside rapid development, and traditional tong lau and temples share an extraordinarily compressed urban environment with Brutalist housing estates and futuristic skyscrapers.
Hong Kong’s physical constraints have also influenced the way he composes photographs.
Steep terrain, extreme density and limited land mean buildings are layered and compressed, frequently revealing themselves from unexpected perspectives. Gary credits this environment with training his eye to search for geometry, repetition and visual order within complexity. It is an instinct he now carries with him when photographing architecture elsewhere in the world.
For Gary, receiving APA’s highest distinction carries significance beyond the award itself.
“More than anything, it encourages me to keep exploring new places, perspectives and ways of seeing architecture.”
Being the first photographer from both Hong Kong and Asia to receive the title makes the recognition particularly meaningful to him. Gary hopes the award can bring greater international attention to creative work emerging from Hong Kong and demonstrate how a visual perspective developed there can resonate with audiences internationally.
His APA 2026 results demonstrate precisely that breadth of perspective.
Among the works recognized by this year’s jury were Concrete Memento, Frames of Minecraft, Steps to Enlightenment and Fragments of Yin & Yang, spanning subjects from Brutalist architecture and façades to symmetry, windows, light and shadow.
Frames of Minecraft received 1st Place in Windows and 3rd Place in Facade Design.
The photograph focuses on the pixel-like geometry of a cylindrical residential façade under strong light.
Viewed from a distance, its stacked modules and repeated windows begin to resemble the constructed environment of Minecraft. Yet those windows also reveal something important beneath the abstraction: each belongs to a real space inhabited by real people.
Gary deliberately photographed the building from afar. The compressed perspective allowed him to flatten its three-dimensional architecture into an almost graphic composition built from light, shadow, geometry and repetition.
That tension also explains Gary’s approach to photographing natural light.
He does not believe there is a single “perfect” moment in architectural photography.
Instead of simply positioning a camera and waiting for predetermined conditions, he continues moving through a space, observing how its architecture changes from different perspectives while watching the light.
Sometimes the planned composition succeeds.
At other times, something stronger happens unexpectedly when light, geometry and human presence briefly align. Gary considers that unpredictability part of what continues to make photography exciting.
Gary’s technical approach follows the architecture rather than dictating it.
His standard equipment includes a full-frame camera, typically combined with a wide-angle lens for interiors and dramatic perspectives and a telephoto lens for compressed details and façades.
A tripod comes into play when precise alignment or longer exposures are necessary, while a drone allows him to investigate architecture from above when regulations and conditions permit.
But there is no universal setup.
The intended perspective comes first; the equipment is selected afterwards.
Travel continues to influence Gary’s understanding of architecture.
Recently, he has been particularly inspired by Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where the intricate geometric patterns and ornamentation of mosques, madrasahs and mausoleums provide a striking visual contrast to the minimalism and fluidity found in much contemporary architecture.
Yet photographing other cities also changes the way he sees home.
Encountering different architectural traditions expands his understanding of what architecture can be, while simultaneously offering new ways to interpret Hong Kong. Sometimes, as Gary observes, seeing somewhere else is precisely what allows you to understand your own city differently.
For photographers trying to establish a recognizable visual identity, Gary’s advice is refreshingly free of the usual command to manufacture a “style.”
Instead, he suggests paying attention to what repeatedly attracts your eye.
“Keep photographing, stay curious, and expose yourself to different ways of seeing.”
A signature style, in his view, emerges less from deliberately trying to appear different and more from understanding the subjects, visual relationships and moments to which you naturally return.
In Gary’s own photography, those recurring elements have become remarkably clear:
Lines. Light. Life.
Together they transform architecture from something merely documented into something observed, interpreted and experienced.
Discover more of Chi Ho Gary Ng’s architectural photography and follow the latest work, winners and stories from the Architecture Photography Awards on Instagram.
Chi Ho Gary Ng: @garyfive
Architecture Photography Awards: @architecturephotographyawards
