Paintings among the series of ink-and-brush works by Lin that are dedicated to the Chinese 24 Solar Terms.[Photo provided to China Daily]

In keeping with his creed Lin took up photography in 2007.

According to him, he initially started taking pictures only to collect material for painting. He has traveled to more than 200 Chinese cities and taken more than 600,000 photos in the past few years.

He is now a member of the National Photographers Association, and was recognized in 2012 as one of the most influential photographers of the year by the newspaper China Photography.

So far, he has published several books on photography, including his best-seller, Waiting for A Blossom. And he continues to record the lives of ordinary Chinese with his lens, and shoot photos about daily life in small cities and rural areas.

In the course of his work, he pays a lot of attention to "left-behind" children and seniors in China's rural areas.

Speaking about the children, he says he remembers being shocked while photographing a 5-year-old girl in Weining, Guizhou province, during a trip there in 2016 as the girl was suffering from malnutrition and was poorly clothed in winter.

So he made up his mind to do something for those children. In the past couple of years, Lin has raised nearly 1 million yuan ($156,000) through sales of his paintings to fund the educations of the "left-behind" children in a remote rural school in Weining.