Documenting our Landscape

Riboud is only partly right. Photography is evidence of a specific moment in time modified by the photographer’s point of view, intent, skill, and experience. So what can one judge as evidence from a photograph? Can one draw inferences about even the time of day, let alone when and where the photograph was made. Take as an example the image in this post. What time of day was this image made? Early morning or late afternoon? Unless one knows the precise direction I pointed my lens, the answer to this question escapes all analysis. When was this image made? Unless you are privy to the EXIF data embedded in the digital file of this image then one can only infer that the image was made in the fall of the year, but what year escapes analysis without the EXIF data embedded in the digital file. Where the image was made is even less accessible than time. Unless I tell you precisely where I shot this image you would need to search some 400 acres of state park land to find the precise tree in question and, even if you thought you found it you could not be sure because that tree is changed from the time this image was made until now when I am writing about it. And then there is the post production work done as a matter of course that turns the RAW digital file into an image that represents what I am prepared to present to the world. My visual interpretation of a scene in the Moraine Hills State Park that spoke to me on a particular morning in the Fall of 2009. This image is not a representation of nature, rather it is an artistic rendering of light and shade, highlight and shadow, and color to make a pleasing image, one that I choose to make public.