The Story Behind "The Churches of Tuscaloosa County, At Night" Series
Why did I shoot a series of nighttime church pictures?
I first shot The Glorious Pentecostal Church of God on September 17, 2024 in the daytime. The disjunction between its grand name and its modest appearance inspired me to seek other small churches near my home in Northport, Alabama.
After shooting more than 20 similarly modest churches, I found myself in an online photography class at the Rhode Island School of Design. The instructor, Allie Tsubota, gave us a final assignment of creating a portfolio on a specific theme. “Ah, hah,” I thought, “Churches!” And Allie encouraged us to push ourselves to try something new photographically.
“Ah, hah,” I thought, “Churches at night!”
Up until then, I had minimal experience shooting at night, but I knew that I did not want to capture images with a flash. Somehow that felt fake. I wanted to experiment with available light and long-exposure nighttime shooting to see if the camera could catch things that the eye normally could not.
Thus, in the fall of 2024, I came to create an initial portfolio of 15 nighttime photographs of churches within a mile of my home. I began to post them on social media and received enough positive feedback to continue the project.
Of course, the first church I re-shot was The Glorious Pentecostal Church of God. How do you think this nighttime photo differs from the daytime one above?
Solo Show
Lorrie Lane, a painter friend of mine, enjoyed the series so much that she offered to host a solo show of it at her studio/gallery in Tuscaloosa, during February 2025.
I encapsulated my rationale for the series in a statement prepared for this show:
My lack of spiritual convictions has meant I’ve often felt alienated from the community in which I’ve resided for over 40 years—Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. But one thing I’ve learned is that Southern Christianity is not as monolithic as I had initially assumed. Southern churches are separated into congregations based on denomination, race, ethnicity, language, economics, tolerance of gender fluidity, and other cultural markers. In particular, I’ve become fascinated with the many small churches in my area. Who attends these churches? How large are their congregations? What distinguishes their Christian beliefs from other Christian denominations?
“Churches of Tuscaloosa County, at Night” documents churches’ facades as a step toward understanding the institutions’ cultural function and significance—focusing on the more modest institutions in my county. The buildings’ appearances often disconnect from the aspirations of the churches’ names. The grandiose sounding Glorious Pentecostal Church of God’s title is emblazoned on the front of a plain brick building that could not possibly hold more than 20 or 30 congregants. This is obviously a very different religious experience than one would have in a massive cathedral.
The full statement can be read online.
Two of the images were also selected for the West Alabama Juried Art Show at the same time. My plan from here is to seek new in-person and online (Substack!) venues to get these photos out into the world.
EDIT (8/11/205): I’ve created an online gallery of the churches and will continue to add images to it as I capture them.
My Aesthetic and Techniques
I’ve restricted myself to a rather limited aesthetic:
No flash
As low an ISO as the camera permits (64 or 100) for maximum resolution
Long exposures were required, but I kept them under 30 seconds. On the cameras I used, going above 30 seconds requires setting the camera on “bulb” and manually tripping the shutter. Fortunately, I was able to avoid this additional complication.
A full-frame camera—to date, a Nikon Zf and a Nikon Z8.
Head-on, eye-level framing—no “dynamic” camera positions (e.g., extreme low/high angle, oblique or canted angles). I want the architecture of each building to “speak for itself” and not be transformed by the photographic process.
A 50 mm focal length lens, when practicable. Wide-angle lenses would result in skewed buildings and weird perspectives. And telephoto lenses would compress the image’s depth. However, there have been times when shooting at 50 mm would mean standing in the middle of a busy street. And so I’ve had to compromise, but none of the images were shot with shorter lenses than 35 mm.
RAW format—for maximum resolution. Eventually, the images were exported as high-resolution, low-compression JPEG files for printing.
Post processing. My goal was to compose the image in-camera, to the extent that that was possible. However, shooting in RAW means that there is always some post processing involved as you generate JPEG files. Aside from minimal cropping and white-balance adjustment, all images had the following adjustments in Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop:
Lightroom Transform was used to straighten any perspectival skew in the buildings.
Lightroom’s black setting was adjusted to make the night sky utterly black, devoid of color. This effect really makes the buildings visually stand out.
Thanks!
Thank you for taking the time to read through this account of “The Churches of Tuscaloosa County, At Night” project. I look forward to hearing any comments and responses you have to it.
These are lovely! Really interesting to see these night shots. Whenever I have travelled through the south, I have always been amazed at the number of houses of worship. Trying to do the math in communities that appear very small, yet have numerous churches, chapels, temples and other houses of worship. In my mind the math never worked, yet the buildings are generally in good condition, and someone clearly cares. Excellent photographs. Really well done.
Interesting choice of font for the Pentecostal church. It looks like a free font of the type that might be used for a wedding invitation. It was a good idea to take the photos at night, though. It sets them apart from ordinary, everyday life somehow.