



articles/Architectural/bia-page2
by Bill Abernethy Published 01/12/2016
New Titanic Belfast Building - opened 2012
I had considered entering this image in the Monochrome category, and at the last minute changed it to Architectural, which was fortunate for me, as I was honoured to win The Societies' Architectural Photographer of the Year Award for 2012 for this image. By such fine margins are Golds and Convention Awards won and lost. This image was particularly poignant, as it was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of Titanic. This particular building has continued to provide me with Gold and Highly Commended Awards since then.
The majority of all my monthly Gold Awards and Highly Commended Awards since then have been for my architectural photography. And I was fortunate again to be awarded Architectural Photographer of The Year 2014 with an image of a Viewing Tower in a shopping complex in Belfast. So, I am indebted to all the judges who saw fit to honour me with those awards. The crowning glory for me was to achieve my Associate qualification on 14 July 2015, which just happened to be my birthday.
Cruise Ship Library
Now ... I am a confirmed technophobe. Anything of a technical nature goes way over my head. I have huge respect and admiration for so many of The Societies' members, professional photographers and judges who do possess so much technical knowledge. I simply do not have that mental capacity, and therefore rely very heavily on my compositional skills, which I believe are my strong point. I am also impatient, and I suppose lazy when it comes to processing any image. For me it is how quickly I can achieve the end result, and the software I use helps me to that end. Shooting exclusively in Raw also usually compensates for any shortcomings in exposure. Up until about one year ago all my images were created from a single file. However, recently I have realised the great benefit of bracketed exposures to gain the best dynamic range and subsequent reduction in noise, particularly in very dark areas of the image. Falling back on single files is still required in locations where tripods are not allowed, which involves coping with slow shutter speeds, sometimes very high ISO, and dealing with high noise levels.
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