In a previous blog, I mentioned that I had achieved the AFIAP distinction from FIAP - la Federation Internationale de l’Art Photographique (the International Federation of Photographic Art). At that stage, I was quite close to achieving the EFIAP distinction, but with the advent of Covid-19, I lost the enthusiasm to keep submitting the FIAP's competitive exhibitions. Nevertheless, in March this year, the enthusiasm started to come back once I'd had my first vaccination against SARS-CoV-2, plus the B.1.1.7 wave of infection started to recede. I began entering some circuits with a few new pictures.

To my surprise, the picture shown above received two medals on its first submission, which was to the Pentaprism Circuit in India in the Travel section. It shows the City of London photographed in the evening blue hour from the viewing platform at Tate Modern. Because I am so familiar with this view, it just seems to me to be a fairly standard view of the City; clearly, the judges in India thought it conveyed something of a sense of place.

It is the same view as I showed in an earlier blog piece about using the Nikon Z6. I had taken a picture of the same view with the Z6 while I was trying it out around Christmas 2019. Technically, that picture was great: very sharp, with everything nicely on scale and loads of detail. But it looked dull: I was sure that, with better light, I could do better.

I went back to the Tate a couple of weeks later, after returning the Z6, and used my Lumix GX9 to get the same view. That evening, the sunset was much better and the tall buildings lit up nicely as the sun went down. Setting my camera on the ledge around the viewing platform, I took a series of pictures as the sun went down and the lights from the buildings came on. The resulting picture has a nice balance of brightness from the sky and the buildings that conveys the atmosphere I wanted.

Although the Z6 has a lot going for it in technical terms compared to the GX9 (it should do - it is 4x the price), there is nothing it can do without the light. This may be the oldest self-evident truism, but photographs are always about the light. There is such a lot of hype at present about needing the latest and greatest gear, that it is easy to forget this. Going back to a location several times with adequate gear to get the best light is much more likely to get you the picture than going just once with the ultra-best. Oh … and the GX9 is more than adequate for this.