I was participating in an art show. There were a few other photographers in the show as well. I’d gone around early in the first day to take a look at other people’s booths to see what variety of art and artisans were in the show. Stopped by one photographer’s display and chatted for a few minutes. Later in the second day, he came to my booth and as we were talking he was looking through some of the prints I had for sale. There were a few of old cars. He looks at them and says ‘hey, I’ve got that same shot only of a blue car’ and ‘I’ve got that one too, only of a red car’. He showed them to me on his iPhone. The two of us had taken almost identical shots of the same model cars just in opposite colours (mine were red and blue to his blue and red). Two people, never having met before, never having been aware of the other or the other’s photography, living hours apart had basically the same shots.

I wonder if, in many cases, it’s not so much a matter of copying or trying to copy (I saw your follow up Guy in which you expanded on what you were referring to by copying); but rather whether there just aren’t (m)any original ideas left. I was in a gallery last summer looking at some work of a Canadian photographer who prints large images on metal. The gallery had a catalogue of some of his other work. Looking through the catalogue, I saw some shots that were eerily similar to some I’d taken earlier in the day and also had planned to print on metal.

Maybe we all just think alike.

“A landscape photographers best work will always be something that can not be duplicated by another professional, everything else is just practice.”

Guy, I think you have misconstrued what I mentioned into something it is not. As landscape photographers we copy, copy, copy, I doubt there is anyone out there who hasn’t done it once. In the end when we are done and unable to create new art are rarest work will be valued the most just like baseball cards. The rare ones are the ones that hold value, we should value are rarest work. Every photographer has a piece of work that can not be duplicated. Students practice by mimicking their mentors. This is the way I learned to create art but I value my own art the most that was not created by an attempt to duplicate another photographer. Every photographer is free to let go of their art of copying state and return to it whenever he or she pleases.

Interesting as alwyas, but I can’t seem to get this thought out of my head since reading this post –

Parody is the highest form of flattery.

Landscape photography is a subject based criteria. An equivalent in music might ‘sad songs’ or ‘protest songs’. What’s interesting is that we imagine we can draw some kind of delineation between photographers taking photos of mountains and photographers taking photos of some other subject, and then compare it to a style of music composition based largely on form – structure and style.

Photography is not performance art. If someone here can sell tickets to watch their next photo shoot, I’ll be impressed.

Cheers

Carl