And The Award Goes To Chris Saunders

The 2018 AIPP Australian Professional Photographer of the Year is Chris Saunders. We at ADP Pro would like to congratulate Chris on winning this prestigious award. Professional photographers from across Australia pour their heart and soul into creating a 4-image portfolio every year.Each entrant dares to dream about taking out the top prize, but there’s only one award.

"ADP Pro is a core part of my workflow. With the small margins that differentiate images at this level, a very important one."

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Each year the AIPP (Australian Institute of Professional Photographers) holds a national competition. Showcasing the amazing work of Australian professional photographers across 13 categories. The entrants submit 4 printed and matted images for judging. A panel of 5 judges, anonymously and live, judge of the entires. Each judge scores the image between 60 and 100, giving a final score based on all the judges scoring. Three portfolio in each category reach the finals, based on the entire portfolios scoring. A category winner is chose from the three portfolios in each category. The Australian Professional Photographer of the Year is chose from the 13 category winners.

A Few Words From Chris

Can you tell us how luminosity masks have helped you in your final creations?

Luminosity Masks and in particular ADP LumiFlow are a core part of my workflow.  Editing the types of landscapes that I am drawn to, mostly involves targeting specific sections of an image. This helps tease out a narrative.  Being able to select individual tonal ranges to apply selective contrast enables me to pull the detail out of the RAW file. And show off some of the textures in our landscapes.  Without this a big part of the impact in my images would be lost. ADP LumiFlow allows me to work on my images in a subtle way without killing the image through over-processing or application to the wrong areas.

Tell us about the awards process, and what they mean to you?

The awards process for me is the biggest opportunity I have each year to make a step change in my development and growth as a photographer. The process of entering 4 images which represent the best you can achieve and have them judged by the industries best photographers is one that pushes me each year to improve my skills.  That’s not forgetting that the standard each year goes from strength to strength. So, if you’re not improving, you’re essentially heading backwards.

The real reward from entering events like the APPAs is the feedback that you get from the judges. The boost you get when an image touches a judge emotionally – that’s the real gold.  Just to get onto the shortlist for the awards requires a lot of luck to go with the hard work that we all put in. To be presented with the AIPP PPY award at the end of it all, was and still is unimaginable.

About Chris Saunders

Chris is a fine art aerial and abstract landscape photographer based out of Perth, Australia. He’s been on the radar of many photographers for a few years with his high impact and dynamic aerial images. His work is highly emotive and depicts our planet in a unique and striking way.

We encourage you to look at more of Chris’s work by clicking on the links below.