Roger Hicks considers… ‘Genna (Ethiopian Christmas)’, 2018, by Oscar Espinosa
Christmas is complicated. For a start, no one knows exactly when Christ was born. The date 25 December was not generally adopted until around 300 years after His death, and it is widely believed (even by the devout) that this was merely a convenient appropriation of an existing pagan mid-winter festival. Different churches use different dates. The Ethiopian Orthodox church celebrates Christmas in early January, which was when Espinosa took this. Regardless of that aspect of the theology, it’s a gorgeous picture of another piece of theology: light out of darkness. It’s also a tribute to both the skill of the photographer and the versatility of photography today.
As early as the 1930s a popular ‘trick’ shot was a picture of someone lighting a pipe or cigarette, lit only by matchlight; and very dull these pictures usually were. Then came colour; fast, coated, effectively flare-free lenses; relatively easy colour balance; and most recently, very high ISO speeds. At last such pictures had the opportunity to be aesthetically attractive as well as technically interesting.
Remarkable depth of field
Instead of concentrating on such mundane subjects as Uncle Harry and his pipe, photographers could now go to the ends of the earth and come back with pictures taken under the most demanding conditions with next to no light, such as this one from Lalibela, in Ethiopia.
The only significant light in this picture, judging from the shadows and highlights, is from the taper, and the depth of field is remarkable: this certainly does not seem to have been taken with an ultra-fast lens at full aperture. There appears to be noise in the picture, but it is very well controlled.
For me, though, the real magic (apart from the composition) is the colour balance. The light from a taper is typically around 1800K, or very yellow indeed, but here the flame itself is distinctly at the blue end of white. The man’s skin and the book he is reading are however distinctly ‘warm’, and so, probably, are his clothes. One can only say ‘probably’ because we cannot actually know the colours of anything in the picture.
There is rarely any such thing as objectivity or accuracy in photography, especially in colour photography. All we can ask is that the photograph is believable; and belief, after all, is what this picture is about. You may find it interesting to re-examine your own beliefs, photographic and otherwise, this Christmas.