Smartphone Street Photography Series #1

I invite you to share the experiences of my daily interactions with my community, through pictures. They are not intended to be masterful effigies, rather honest comprehension of life as it goes on around me, be it on the streets of Lagos, Uyo or Calabar. They will mostly feature people dealing with everyday life. Some of it will be really happy moments, some will be sad too. Some will be beautiful, others will not be. But all of it will be honest. That I can promise. Let's dive in.

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_{f/2.0; 1/290 sec; ISO 120}

I met this man in the very early hours of a Monday morning in Maryland, Lagos. Lagos being what it is, he had probably woken quite too early to join the commute against the heavy traffic of the rush hours, to clock in at work on time. Tired, exhausted, down to survive, all while delivering service energy to customers, meet the dozing pump man.

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_{f/2.0; 1/470; ISO 112}

Nigeria is a very religious nation, with the population fairly distributed between Islam and Christianity. Folks with beads, and forehead scarred from constant bowing. Cars with stickers of ambitious, prophetic declarations and church logo footers. Nigerians are pious and they will put it in your face.

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_{f/2.0; 1/470; ISO 112}

Palm oil consumption in Nigeria amounted to about 1.34 million metric tons since 2011 to date. Much of this production and distribution happens through local market systems with very loose organizational structures, and the majority players are local women and men (mostly from the "unbanked population") who sell in settings like above to off-takers who then deal go ahead to trade with industrial and international buyers. This pattern is not peculiar to palm oil alone, but with other food products like crayfish, bitter kola and what have you

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I intend to keep these short and insightful. I look forward to the next ones. All photos were taken with an Infinix X603 mobile phones and edited in Adobe Photoshop CC. If you find value in this, please consider upvoting, sharing and following for more.
Peace.