“To me,” begins Joao Branco, “travel is one of the best things that a person can do with their time. New places are the gateway to fresh experiences and that opens your mind. As a landscape photographer, travel is also the perfect opportunity to discover inspiring scenes.”

With his photography featured by the likes of National Geographic and BBC Travel, Joao says his main drive is to make people appreciate the beauty of the planet. “When a view has made an impression on me or stirred my emotions, I want to share it. Memories fade, but photography is something that lasts forever.”

Preferring to visit places off the beaten track, Joao has made China one of his go-to destinations. “I’ve travelled there more than 60 times, but the funny thing is, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface,” he says. “I love the people and the culture, and it has endless beautiful landscapes and skylines. It’s so full of wonder, and some places look like they’ve come from a fantasy film.”

Joao spent three weeks in China on his most recent visit, starting in Shanghai and going on to visit Zhangjiajie Forest, ChongQing City, Fanjingshan Mountain, LongJi Rice Terraces, Guilin and Wangxiangu. “It was a 4000km train travel adventure,” he remembers. “The target was, as always, to learn, experience and capture the most stunning views I could find.”

As usual, Joao was struck by the lack of western tourists in many of those amazing locations. “Westerners do visit, but it’s mainly the cities and the better known places. I was the only one at the temples in Fanjingshan and Wangxiangu. There are lots of Chinese tourists and I love my interactions with them and the locals. They love to practise their English and some of them even wanted to shoot selfies with me, because they rarely see foreigners.”

An engineer by trade, Joao perfectly understands the need to use the right tools, and that’s why the Sony Alpha 7CR was his partner on this trip. “I don’t think you could find a better camera for travel and landscapes,” he admits. “It has an incredible mix of power and portability, which is vital on trips like these. I want the best resolution so I can capture every amazing detail in a place like Longji Rice Terraces, but it’s 1000m above sea level, so you feel every gram in your bag on the way up. The Alpha 7CR really helps with that.”

“But it doesn’t compromise on build to do it,” he continues. “It was humid, rainy, dusty and hot, and the camera was out of the pack most of the time. But even with me changing lenses in the mists of Zhangjiajie Forest, I had no problems at all. I think it helps that the camera has been designed to be as small as possible. It’s so compact, there’s no room for stuff to get in!”

Despite being so much smaller than cameras with equivalent resolution, the Alpha 7CR still has all the features that he needs, Joao says. One of them is focus bracketing, a feature he uses to get maximum sharpness in his shots. “Focus bracketing will allow you to produce all the focus images you need to produce a stacked focus shot," he explains. “It’s very useful for landscapes.”

“Even with the Alpha 7CR’s 61MP resolution and with a small aperture, a single photo will only be perfectly sharp in the place it's focused,” he continues. “But by setting the camera to automatically take three images at the same time, the first focused on the foreground, the second on the middle ground and the third on the distance, they can be combined to achieve perfect clarity.”

Joao also relies on the Alpha 7CR’s superb ISO performance and dynamic range.

“The main thing I’ve learned from travelling in places like China, is that our planet has so much to offer,” he finishes. “It’s understandable that people are caught up in human affairs and the world has a lot of problems right now, but when you experience the wonder of geography that’s been carved out over millions of years, it gives you a new perspective. Most people really don’t realise the kind of beauty that’s out there, but along with the Alpha 7CR, I’m hoping to change that.”