I find it amusing that so many early photographers are considered artists, "greats", etc., when by todays technical standards they are quite ordinary. Many are painfully bad. What we really admire in these early works is that they were created with the most rudimentary tools - glass plates, chemistry that would melt a volkswagon, and bad optics. They were the pioneers, and as in any endeavor, those that follow develop a reverent respect for the ground-breakers. Their prints are important not for their photographic excellence or the "mastery of craft" that produced them, but because they represent a "golden-time" in the development of photography. They convey a certain antiquity that, as photographers, we tend to fall in love with.

Atget's "vision" was, by his own admission, a pure documentation of a specific place at a specific time. He did not set out to create "art", nor was he pretentious regarding the results. The fact that others saw the prints artistic and were willing to throw money at them might have created a market value, but did nothing to improve the photograph. And if I'm not mistaken, Atget devoted 20 years to photographing Paris - hardly a flash in the pan! You obviously admire Atget's work and draw inspiration from it, but don't let that turn into emulation. You have better film, a better camera, and probably produce better photographs. They're just not Atget's.