Time-Light Adventure

I'm old enough, and I've spent enough time around cameras, to appreciate a really new photographic adventure. While no expert myself, I have enough experience to hold great respect for those who are. In the Adirondack Artists' Guild's newest exhibit, photographer Burdette Parks bends perception, understanding, and light in ways that capture time itself.



In photography, time equals light.



Many years ago, my Dad taught me to photograph by measuring light to adjust the f-stop and shutter speed. I would record these details in a little notebook for future reference. Dad told me to bracket shots, with over- and under-exposed images on either side of a "correct" exposure, so that I could later compare and evaluate the prints.



In high school photo class, I learned to love the darkroom's red light, the chemical baths with their distinctive odors, and the string with its clips for drying. I would play with exposure there too, fiddling around to make an image lighter or darker.



Some years later, I had a Pentax SLR which did a lot of this work for me. I tucked away my light meter and grew lazy, trusting the camera's "auto" function more than my own eyes.


These days, I luxuriate in a Canon digital camera, and have grown accustomed to the flexibility of knowing I can play with the light after the fact, on my computer. (I have also learned that a bad shot is still a bad shot, no matter what the computer does to it!)



For his fascinating and ground-breaking new show, "Dimensions: The Expandable Camera", Burdette writes, "the camera defines an artificial frame around an arbitrary subject for a finite period of time ... we are accustomed, through long practice and tradition, to nearly unlimited variation and choice in the selection of ... subject and framing ... But what happens if the Time parameter is treated as variably as the parameters of subject and format?"



The old light meter would help us determine how much time to give an exposure; the newer Pentax and digital Canon can make that determination for us, if we want them to. But what if we take the whole question of light - that is, exposure time - away from the machines and own it for ourselves? Can a two-dimensional image of a three dimensional object express that fourth dimension - time?



It would seem so. This show does things with photography that I, for one, would never have imagined. You can click here to see some of the images, but they are worth seeing in person. The computer cannot represent the works' three dimensional format - much less their fourth!

Overlooked Art

Got leftovers?

We did, and boy, were they yummy!

Of course, good food should also be aesthetically pleasing. I remember being taught in middle school Home Ec class to ensure that any meal had lots of color: green vegetables, brown meat, white starch...

Many people, of course, do not eat this way, but the principle of attractive presentation applies regardless of actual menu. And visual as well as culinary artists are sensitive to these beauties. Still life, especially, is known to exploit the natural richness of color, texture, and form as found in food.


Above is a piece by Paul Cezanne (1839 - 1906) which celebrates the pure, warm colors of fresh cherries and peaches, contrasting them to the cool whites of the tablecloth and the dim greens and blues of the background.

(See my previous post on color for more on warm vs. cool.)


Whole, fresh fruit is, indeed, a thing of beauty. Also, many still lifes feature fruit in the midst of being peeled, as if someone was interrupted from a meal just in time for the artist to take a curious glance.


But: what of the peel itself? That's garbage, right? Fit for the compost pile or the disposal unit, but no more. Right?


Photographer Burdette Parks of RoundLake Studios, based in the Saranac Lake area, might beg to differ. In the image below, titled "Fruitless", he turns his curious camera on the remnants of cooking and feasting.

When did you last observe the elegant asymmetry of a pistachio shell, or the delicacy of its denuded membrane? Had you ever before appreciated the graceful arc of an empty orange peel? What of a sturdy apple stem, recalling the fruit's bond to its tree even when all but its core has been eaten?



As I have written before, great art often enables us to see the familiar in a new way. Burdette, in this photo, has drawn our attention to the nobility inherent in nature, even in the least of its manifestations.

As can be seen on his web page, he often helps us appreciate nature's nobility, as well as that of human creations. Not just in the grand things - though he's good at that, too - but also in the tiny, the overlooked.

A few years ago, Burdette mounted a show of photos taken in the village of Saranac Lake, but with a twist. He turned his camera on the town's minutiae: a curl of wrought iron here, the edge of a step there. As I recall, the challenge was to identify the location of each photo. I didn't get them all, but I certainly began noticing details of architecture and location which had never before warranted a second glance.

Perhaps, ultimately, THAT is art: opening our eyes, renewing our minds, revealing the hidden. And that is what Burdette Parks does very well.