In 2021 we went with the lovely and beautiful Miss Belgium 2021, Kedist Deltour to Addis Abeba to look for her biological father.

When Kedist was 10 years old she was adopted with her younger brother and sister by a Belgian Family as they were put in an orphanage a few months before. The father could not take care of them anymore after her mum died of cancer.

The photo below is one of the only moments in my life as an adult I cried. It was taken in the room where she grew up. It was a simplistic basic house (rather a cabin) and made out of mud (probably loam soil) and straw.

You have to imagine a few hours before she was just reunited with her father.

We entered the room and she sat on the bed and we didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I was a bit emotional because of what happend before and you could clearly see Kedist was bringing back memories. She smiled and looked at me and suddenly said: “I was so happy and I have really beautiful memories here“. At that very moment I cried. These words grabbed me by the throat. Growing up in a very minimalistic and basic world and still being happy. The photo was taken just a few seconds before.

I used the Sony A1 at ISO 2500, 1/60 and f/4 (24-105 f/4 lens).

Even in this very dark environment it locked the eye.

Back home I post processed the photos and made the overal image brighter. Personally I would rather choose to keep it that way as it was a correct representation of the moment. For the newspapers I had to brighten the image.

It is impressive the A1 image sensor is really capable of brightening the overal image as it was shot that way.

Thank you Kedist for sharing this moment with me and looking at life differently.