Interpretations of Color

Even from the beginning, Judy Helderman found herself surrounded by cameras and pictures that captured vivid insights into the soul of mankind and the landscape upon which the world lived at large.
She was right out of college and working with a film documentary unit for the American Broadcasting System. Her job was to make sure that the film reached the lab, was technically acceptable, and processed as soon as possible.

She would sit with the editor and carefully watch frame after frame. “I saw a lot of film,” she says, “and I began to understand that photography can be a powerful tool when used properly to tell a story.”

Sometimes dramatic.

Sometimes poignant.

Sometimes almost comical.

Always memorable.

A camera in the hands of a professional could record a single moment in time, one that, in a documentary or even in a photograph, had the ability to preserve an image, an idea, a thought, a slice of life, a portrait of history as it was passing her by.

In time, Judy Helderman found herself behind the camera. It was her eye and her lens reaching out to document those unforgettable images she found in the ever-changing American landscape.

It was not as easy as she thought it would be.

She says, “I could not wait to see those first pictures I had taken after finally buying a small point-and-shoot camera. They came back from the lab, and I was so disappointed.”

The camera had not captured what her eyes had seen.

She joined a camera club near her New Jersey home, and the education of Judy Helderman began. She learned all about angles and light and the effect of light upon colors, both bright and subdued.

She was soon winning almost every photographic competition she entered, and one of her images was chosen to hang in the Smithsonian Institution.

Judy Helderman was becoming an artist, and she traveled every spare minute she could escape. She says, “I traveled all over the world, and a good part of every day was spent with my camera. I wanted to take home the sights I saw. I wanted others to see the sights I saw. The camera held my emotions and my experiences.”

Back home, the whole country, from coast to coast, became Judy Helderman’s canvas. She would record the old and the new, great city skylines and rusting remnants of scenes gone by, people at work and people at play.

In each, as always, she saw a story.

Sometimes dramatic.

Sometimes poignant.

Sometimes comical.

Judy Helderman points out, “I strictly work in color. It excites me. I love it. If anything can be said about my art, it’s that the images are saturated in color. In other times, I worked in a darkroom surrounded by the pungent odors of chemicals. Now, my darkroom is my computer. On it, I can enhance the photographs and amplify the color. For me, it’s all part of the creative process.”