The eye of the storm

During junior middle school, he joined amateur meteorology groups on instant messaging program QQ, which attracted input from experts working in the field. This communication helped him study the subject intently. He read numerous books related to weather and climate and studied meteorological affairs online.

"I realized in senior middle school that meteorology was what I wanted to do," Liu says, adding that he opened his own account on social media to forecast weather and spread the science of meteorology.

It was around that time he was diagnosed with chronic colitis, a bowel disorder, but he still managed to pass the national college entrance exam, yet failed to achieve a high enough score to get into his ideal school to study his dream major. On campus though he became interested in landscape photography and, in early 2020, he purchased some equipment, such as cameras and a drone, and opened a photo studio with a friend.

Again, fate dealt him a bad hand, as the COVID-19 outbreak interrupted the project and he returned home due to lockdown.

Just as the old saying goes: "when one door closes, another opens", with Liu's studio plan delayed, he started thinking about what he was really interested in recording. The majesty of thunderstorms came to mind.

When a storm hit his hometown in 2020, Liu operated his drone to take a time-lapse video. This kick-started his career as a storm photographer.

In July 2020, he went to Inner Mongolia for his first storm-chasing trip. The location was carefully chosen as, for Liu, the region meets three conditions for photographing storms: having flat prairie terrain with no valleys or mountains, being sparsely populated and with relatively low humidity.