Sunset light at the chapel.
Last Wednesday, May 21, I wrote about how to make photographs that are "clean," that is, that are composed so that they include everything necessary to tell their story, and have no extraneous elements in the frame that detract from their message. If you missed it, you can read it here.
The picture above would seem to violate that rule, yet I consider it my all-time best photograph.
The year was 1989 and I was at the mission hospital at Abak, Ibom Province, Nigeria, on assignment for Church of God World Missions. Chapel service had just ended as the setting tropical sun, its beams parallel to the ground, threw a splash of flame against the chapel wall.
At first, the picture appears chaotic. Where does that glorious light come from? Where is the woman whose shadow is cast on the wall on the left? What is the meaning of the rope hanging from the upper left corner? Who is the man half-hidden in the shadows on the right? The photograph doesn't answer any of those questions, but when you look carefully, you can see that all the elements work together. There is nothing in the picture that does not contribute to the whole; there is nothing that needs to be added to create an atmosphere of beauty and mystery. That is the message of this photograph: beauty and mystery.
I seldom used auto-exposure back then, but the light was fading quickly. There was no time to do anything except raise my Olympus OM2n and click off three quick shots with the lens that was on it – a Tamron 100-300mm f4 zoom at the 300mm setting. I noticed that the exposure on Fujichrome RD100 slide film was 1/15th second, so I had little hope of getting anything usable. No chimping in those days!
Did I think through the placement of all the elements in my composition? No, there wasn't time. I simply reacted to the burst of sunset light against the chapel wall. But years of training my eyes and mind to seek good compositions paid off, even when I was not consciously thinking about it.
Back in the US, when the film was processed and edited I was pleased to find that I had one very sharp exposure and another that was usable. This is the best one.
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Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
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