How Sound Elevated the POWER HIPA Award 2025 Experience
Introduction
Every great award ceremony begins with a moment that sets the emotional tone. For the POWER HIPA Award 2025, that moment was the Opening Film — a beautifully crafted tribute to the photographers who dedicate their lives to capturing the perfect shot.
https://hipa.ae/award/power-hipa-award-2025
At WithFeeling, we had the privilege of composing the original score and creating the complete sound design for this film, delivering a full 7.2 immersive audio mix that wrapped the audience in detail, depth, and emotion.
Photography is about instinct, courage, and timing. Our job was to bring those stories to life sonically — to give movement to stillness, weight to silence, and emotion to every frame. Here’s how we approached one of the most significant pieces of audio we’ve created for HIPA.
Why the Opening Film Matters in an Award Ceremony
The Opening Film does more than introduce a theme — it shapes the audience’s emotional expectations for the entire night. For Power HIPA Award 2025, the theme of “POWER” explored resilience, creativity, and the human instinct to push beyond limits. The film needed to capture that spirit while honouring the photographers behind the work.
Award ceremonies rely heavily on auditory cues to guide viewers. Research from the National Library of Medicine shows that emotionally aligned audio can increase audience engagement and memory retention by up to 20 per cent.
This made the Opening Film an ideal opportunity to blend emotional storytelling with immersive sound. The visuals were striking, but without the right audio world around them, the emotional depth would never fully land. Our goal was simple: create a soundscape that made the audience feel the story behind every image.
Composing a Score That Speaks to Photographers
The audience for POWER HIPA Award 2025 wasn’t just attending an event — they were photographers, artists, and visual storytellers who had chosen this craft as their life’s work. The score needed to reflect that.
Our approach focused on three emotional anchors:
1. Awe and Discovery
Soft strings, atmospheric synthesis, and gentle harmonic progressions created a sense of wonder — mirroring the curiosity that drives photographers to explore the world.
2. Dedication and Sacrifice
We layered deeper orchestral textures to express the weight of commitment required to capture a single powerful image. Behind every award-winning photograph is a story of patience, risk, and passion.
3. Human Connection
Melodic hooks carried warmth and humanity, reminding the audience that photography is ultimately about people — their stories, their triumphs, their struggles.
The music wasn’t written to dominate the visuals. Instead, it had to sit beneath them, lifting emotion without imposing on the images themselves. As Joe Dickinson, our Chief Music Officer, often says:
“When the music serves the story, you don’t just see the moment — you feel it.”
This philosophy shaped every note of the Opening Film.
Sound Design That Brings Still Images to Life
The real artistry of the Opening Film came through sound design. Each photograph held a world of detail, and our task was to reveal that world sonically.
We used sound design to:
• Add depth to textures and landscapes
• Suggest movement within still photographs
• Highlight dramatic moments with subtle impact cues
• Create atmospheric layers that matched each environment
Dust, wind, footsteps, shutters, distant echoes, quiet breaths — every sound was chosen to reflect the story behind the image. Many of these sounds were placed with absolute precision to feel real but never distracting.
The 7.2 mix allowed us to position sounds around the audience, giving the film a sense of scale and immersion:
- Subtle risers moved overhead
- Impact sounds travelled from side to side
- Environmental layers filled the room
- Tonal textures supported emotional shifts
This wasn’t just sound design. It was emotional choreography.
As our Head of Sonic Branding, Keith Gillespie, puts it:
“When sound design becomes invisible, it becomes unforgettable.”
The Opening Film perfectly illustrated that idea.
Why a 7.2 Mix Elevated the Experience
Award ceremonies are typically mixed in stereo or 5.1 surround. A 7.2 mix gave the Power HIPA Award 2025 Opening Film an additional dimension of space and clarity, creating a more immersive and cinematic atmosphere.
What the extra channels allowed us to achieve:
• Greater precision — pinpoint placement of sounds around the room
• More emotional depth — richer low-frequency detail that the audience felt physically
• Enhanced realism — atmospheric layers that matched the scale of the visuals
• Immersive storytelling — placing the viewer inside the photograph
In a room full of creators who live and breathe visual detail, this level of sound immersion made a real difference. The film didn’t just play — it unfolded around them.
A Tribute to the Craft of Photography
Although the Opening Film was designed to set the tone for the ceremony, it served a deeper purpose: celebrating the artists whose work defines HIPA. Every frame represented years of training, countless hours in the field, and a lifetime of passion.
Our goal was to honour that.
By blending music, sound design, and immersive mixing, we created a sonic world that respected the craft, dedication, and emotion behind every photograph. The result was a film that resonated with the audience not only visually, but emotionally — a moment of connection shared across the room.
HIPA 2025: A Global Celebration of Power Through Photography
The fourteenth edition of the Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award (HIPA) concluded at Dubai’s Museum of the Future, bringing together the global photography community for an evening shaped by powerful imagery and cultural exchange.
This year’s theme, Power, drew an extraordinary 87,000 submissions from nearly 50,000 photographers worldwide. The winning photographs ranged from nature’s extremes to human perseverance, offering layered interpretations of what power means today.
The US$200,000 Grand Prize was awarded to Gianluca Gianferrari for a dramatic shot of Mount Etna erupting against the snow — a striking fusion of geological force and visual poetry. Other notable winners included Karine Aigner for her evocative jaguar portrait, and Ali Jadallah, whose portfolio Burden of Survival captured the emotional weight of life under siege. Judges noted that the strongest entries embraced complexity, revealing power as both physical force and human resilience.
HIPA Secretary-General Ali Khalifa bin Thalith highlighted the award’s increasing global reach and its role in promoting photography as a tool for communication and cultural understanding — a clear reflection of Dubai’s wider strategy to cultivate creative soft power. Hosting the event at the Museum of the Future, alongside programming such as the Dubai Photo Forum, reinforced the emirate’s ambition to establish itself as an international hub for visual storytelling.
Special honours went to Rick Smolan, recognised for his decades-long impact on global photography, and Mark Smith, celebrated for his wildlife storytelling and digital influence. Local photographer Yousef Bin Shakar Al Zaabi earned third place in the General (Black and White) category, while Indian photographers Deepak Singh Dogra and Shantha Kumar Nagendran were also among the finalists — continuing a strong regional presence.
Beyond the awards night, HIPA’s broader schedule of exhibitions, talks, and workshops helps extend these conversations into the public sphere. This combination — world-class venue, international jury, substantial prize fund, and global media attention — strengthens Dubai’s cultural voice while giving photographers a meaningful platform to share their stories with the world.
Wrapping Up
Creating the original score and full sound design for the Power HIPA Award 2025 Opening Film was a chance to celebrate photography through the lens of sound. Every musical phrase, every ambient detail, and every spatial element was designed to bring still images to life and honour the dedication behind them.
For us at WithFeeling, projects like this highlight the power of audio to move people, shape emotion, and deepen storytelling. If you’re developing an event, film, or immersive experience, we’d love to help you craft a sound that elevates your story.
Explore more of our work on our website or reach out to discuss how we can support your next creative journey.
All You Need is Love, and a Subscription to Our Bi-Monthly Newsletter!
