Belfast City Hall is so well known and recognised that it's a challenge to depict
it in a different light, hopefully you will agree that I have achieved this.
I have always admired it as an example of fine Civic Architecture and wanted
to create an image worthy of that heritage. My collection included many daytime
shots but I felt an evening shot with floodlighting would add an extra dimension.
Most views of Belfast City Hall use the Linenhall Library as their viewpoint
so I opted for Belfast Water Office (now Marks & Spencer) for mine.
I had never tried evening photography before and read that Tungsten Film would
give good results, luckily I also took some Kodachrome 64 as when the results
came back I much preferred it's rendition of the scene. I shot from two different
locations at the Water Office but preferred the lower vantage point as it emphasized
the subject better. The shots taken earlier with some daylight in the sky were superior in their
impact to those with a completely dark sky. Due to the relatively long exposures
there were light trails of traffic headlights in all returned images, but I
feel this adds life to the scene.
The picture chosen stands out from its peers for several reasons, it's vibrant,
well composed, the light trails of the traffic are consistent with no large
vehicles caught like ghosts and most importantly the fading daylight gives the
City Hall a 3 dimensional quality, for me it's Belfast City Hall.
Date - Winter, early 1980's
Camera - Yashica TLElectro XiTS
Lens - Vivitar 28mm F2.8
Tripod - SLIK 35D
Film - Kodachrome 64 (35mm)
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