“Owning a camera doesn’t make you a photographer, any more than owning a piano makes you a musician” – Ansel Adams
Our father died in 1972 after years of heart problems and cancer. I have first-hand witnessed for decades all my brothers, my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks included, expressing and demonstrating hatred and disrespect of our father. Yet I very strongly believe that in order to fraudulently advertise and promote himself and his Weddings Thru the Lens “business” (usually unregistered and unlicensed) to the public my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks uses our father’s name and image on his websites, blogs, and social media posts and makes false statements about our father being a “professional photographer” and “navy photographer.” It seems very apparent that my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks uses our deceased father’s name and image in order to give the general public the impression of credibility as a “professional photographer,” claiming to have “apprenticed” under our father. In reality, our father was never a “professional photographer” nor was he a “navy photographer.” He was a chief radioman in the U.S. navy, and photography was one of his hobbies. My father also liked to paint and draw, but that didn’t make him a professional artist either. My personal memory is that my father was hired to take a few friend-of-a-friend wedding photos in the mid-late 1960s when he was half-way healthy enough to do that. My brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks was about 12-14 years old at the time, and I remember that our father said he needed him to carry his camera equipment bag because of his failing health. So, my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks never “apprenticed” under our father during those few friend-of-a-friend wedding photography jobs my father did, unless one believes that carrying a camera equipment bag is “apprenticing.”
My husband and I also have documentation that strongly indicates my brother Ken “Pastor Max” Parks may have stolen photographs from other photographers’ websites and presented those photos as his own on some of his websites, such as his “Weddings Thru the Lens” and “Fotos by Ken” websites.
