The lighting on the church on the right is flat and soft, not clearly directional (note that there are no shadows from the iron railing). The tonal range is certainly adequate, although there are no true highlights. The top of the entrance area is in shadow, but there is significant detail even there. If I had wanted to reveal more I might have used fill-flash to illuminate it. It is an adequate “real estate” shot, useful for illustrating a book on architecture, but otherwise not very interesting unless you are fascinated by the Romanesque Revival. Now consider
the image of the shadows falling across the entrance of another
stone church about 20 miles away. The doors are all but
obscured, and although we can easily discern the Gothic arch shape
of the entrance, it is not as obvious because of the shadows. Is
it a better image? In my opinion it is, although The question that arises is what is the image about? In the Romanesque Revival image is it about architecture, a specific style of architecture, and that's it. In the above example I would say it is about mood and time of day; but if you react to it even a little bit as I do it may also be about some aspect or story associated with the scene that is not readily apparent. Look at Coburn's Ipswich Bridge here for an image of a bridge that is also about something entirely different. Now consider the picture of the belfry on the right. Although some of the shadows help to accentuate the form of the pediment and columns, one unfortunate shadow falls diagonally across the front of the belfry, breaking up the vertical columns and obscuring the platform. Here the shadow creates a discontinuity in the belfry in a way that the shadows falling on the columns of the Gothic church do not. Why not? I'm not entirely sure. In both cases we can see enough of the structure to infer the rest, but the “incomplete” portion of the belfry I see as a problem whereas the obscured portions of the Gothic entrance cause me no difficulty. Perhaps it is that the image of the belfry isn't very strong to begin with; even if the shadow did not break across the front, it would not have been a very arresting image. In the image below the belfry we have another where shadows are falling across the subject. That broken pattern of light and dark caused by foliage is almost always a problem. But I find this image reasonably effective—the shadows do not seem to break up the structure in the same way, although we have to look a little harder to see that the stones above the arch are set at a different angle than the regular masonry. The entry area is readily discernible because the contrast of the bright white doors, even speckled as they are, makes them obvious. I frankly like the doors quite a bit. You may hate them. There are strong shadows that accentuate the frame, although shadows do break up the steps. Mood rather than vernacular architecture is what this is about. If the light were even this would be another "real estate" shot; competent, but not very interesting. Next let's examine the entrance to another late nineteenth century church—this one (on the right) built for an upscale Presbyterian congregation. Here the dark areas are not shadows falling across the entrance; they are surrounding areas in shadow, including foliage in front of the entry. That distinction strikes me as significant— shadows falling on a subject versus areas in shadow. The dark areas here don't get sufficient light and thus serve to frame it. There are small shadowed areas that give depth to the open timberwork of the entrance, and they are important, but not the element I want to focus on. The foliage on the right is a little too light for me, but we can fix that by burning it in. The image doesn't provide all that the architectural student might desire, but it has a feeling about it (to me) that invites me to explore a bit more—to try to tease out the open framework of the pediment and the bracing frame of the doors themselves. This is also about mood, or perhaps discovery. One final image of a church entrance. I have photographed the front of this 1830s Reformed church under several kinds of light and from several angles. This is by far my favorite simply because of the shadow of the tree and where it falls. If it were centered on the door I would not care for the image at all, but because it is set just to the right it is almost as though it were placed there to mark the entrance. Incidentally, several years after I took this picture I saw quite a similar print by Ansel Adams, no less, come up for auction at Sotheby's or Christies. I have a dozen books of Adams photographs but never recalled seeing this before and had little idea he was ever even in New Jersey. Adams shot the other door, by the way (two entrances were standard—one for men and one for women in Calvinist churches in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries).
All of these observations are purely subjective, of course, and cannot be reduced to a formula or a checklist of things to look for. But can you find such shadows by looking for them, or are they merely the happy accidents that sometimes occur? Indeed, are they even worth looking for? I think they are. Look at the images of Alvarez-Bravo and the early work of Paul Strand. There is an intelligence at work in both men's images. And I believe you can set out to find shadowed things to point your camera at. Get up early, or stay out during the cocktail hour when the light is coming from a low angle. Don't just go looking for doorways, but do keep your eye out for shapes, figures, and patterns as well as for dark areas that help to illuminate (that's a metaphorical pun, folks) an interesting subject. And don't think you always have to place your shadows on Zone III.
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The Hamilton Avenue Methodist church in Trenton, New Jersey. The accentuated arch, carved capitols and rusticated stone were characteristic of the Romanesque Revival, an architectural style popular for post offices and court houses as well as churches after the Civil War. The image of the Gothic entrance to the left is of St John the Apostle Roman Catholic church in Lambertville, New Jersey. All of these images are from my books on the New Jersey Churchscape, a photographic inventory of the eighteenth and nineteenth century religious architecture of the state.
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you
might not prefer it if you were illustrating that architectural book.
What is there
about this image that causes me to linger over it, to try to figure
out what it's about? It may be because the shadows create some doubt
in my mind that I have apprehended everything there. They suggest
there is something more to the story. That is an entirely subjective
feeling, of course, but it is the same sense that I get from much
of the work of Mexico's 
So
now we have come full circle in a sense—from a shadow that
obscures part of the image to one that frames the important aspect
of the image to this where the shadow itself is an important shape,
one not any less important than the entrance console itself. In two
or three of the earlier images the shadows seem to suggest a story
behind what is apparent. In the first image we examined, the light
was flat and there was no suggestion of anything else; here we
are
directed
to
the formal, balanced geometry of a Georgian architectural detail
paired with the fuzzy irregularity of an untrimmed tree. I suggest
that if one were to remove the major shadows from any of these
images
we would not have much worth looking at.
St. Patrick's Roman Catholic
church, Chatham, New Jersey.
The Mt. Zion Methodist
church, on the Sourland Mountain near Weert's Corner, New Jersey.
The
Central Presbyterian church in Orange, New Jersey (above). To the left is
the Dutch Reformed church of Blawenburg, New Jersey, a building listed on
the National Register of Historic Places.