Celebrating performance and visual arts
Photography :
Burdette Parks
Storytelling :
Fran Yardley
All contents on this site are Copyright protected.
© 2009 Burdette Parks, RoundLake Studios. All rights reserved.
www.roundlakestudios.com
For site issues, E-
Site Design by RoundLake Studios using WebPlus X4 by Serif.
Photographs can be records, interpretations or impressions. They can reflect how a scene, an event, a moment was interpreted in the instant that image was captured. When I take pictures, something about what my eyes are seeing is compelling enough to make me pause, study, aim the camera and trip the shutter. But the images my mind sees are frequently different than the pictures that come out of the camera. My goal, once an image has been captured, is to process the resulting negative, be it film or digital, so it more accurately interprets or expresses the image in my mind's eye.
Should photographs tell the Truth? That could depend on how "Truth" is defined—assuming it is definable. Does "Truth" mean absolute fidelity to the perceived reality of the original scene or image, or does it mean the Truth of what the photographer saw or felt? And what kind of Truth is that? Is it a photojournalist's Truth or an artist's Truth? Is it an observer's Truth or a participant's Truth? Is that Truth perceived with the eyes, the mind, the heart or some combination of them all?
Is Truth even the issue? Isn't a photograph in its simplest terms the interpretation of a moment, a composition of light captured within a frame of time? Such an interpretation is inevitably affected by the equipment and materials used to record the moment. It is affected by the intentions of the photographer. It is affected by the timing of when the shutter is released—a fraction of a second can dramatically change the "Truth" a picture reveals. And it is affected by how that recorded moment is transformed from a latent image to a finished print. My bottom line for the resulting images is to end with a pleasing, emotive visual experience for myself and, hopefully, for other viewers.