When I've been to Yosemite somehow I'm drawn to some of the great images that have been taken there that I have seen. Am I consciously looking for the same tripod holes no!
I'm drawn by the light and sometimes it is the same as one of the greats. I'm sure Ive seen this image before by Ansel Adams.
Maybe my carbon print was at a different time of the year. It was not until I made the print that I realized that it has been done before. So........ guilty!
Yes, Jim, but even over the web I can spot how different the feel of your image is, and even the perspective. Of course, the carbon print will look very different from a silver one. And AA's tripod went places in Yosemite where many many had gone before. I don't know when it all began, but slightly after the Civil War. My babysitter as an infant claimed to be the first white woman in Yosemite as a little girl. She was 95, as I sorta remember, when she took care of me, and claimed to see Yosemite first as a 7 yr old, so that would have been in 1861 or so. I heard the stories secondhand from her daughter, who was an old lady herself when I took care of her garden as a kid. It sounds authentic because she claimed Indian fashion at the time in Yosemite Valley was exactly zero, just like ambrotypes of Indian villages taken in our specific neighborhood slightly further south in that same decade. But this story is a bit of a mystery because the oldest known photo taken there, by Charles Weed in 1859, had his wife in the party. There was already a little log tourist hotel constructed, and the Indians would have been either driven out or at least made modest. But if my Babysitter was actually in her late 90's, which is entirely possible, that account makes sense. We lived right across the road from her in a tiny house in a tiny town, so her advanced age was not an issue. She lived in relatively good health well over 100. The oldest Miwok I ever knew, though not an Ahwahneechee, was born in 1840, and other very old Indians claim he was a middle-aged man before he ever saw a white man. I interviewed him when he was 122. His utter hatred for local Monache Paiute-descended Indians was in full vigor even at that age. Very few Indians of my own generation lived past 30. That's what "civilization" and its store-bought liquid amenities does.
Last edited by Drew Wiley; 8-Jul-2019 at 20:41.
How about accidental plagiarism?
Back in the late 90s I was driving through Yosemite and saw this tree. Did a U-ey and shot it. I was showing the print to a friend the next week and he got up, went over to the bookshelf, grabbed an Ansel book and showed me the Ansel print. Shame too because I like the print. Last time I ever went to Yosemite.
But that's a different tree...
We change over time and so does everything else.
We do not live in the past, we live now!
Tin Can
Millions of people have driven past that tree. Ansel's picture has a classic delicate balance to it, yours has far more dynamic energy to the composition. There's more than one way to make a taco. One of AA's finest shots in my opinion he ever took of the Valley, which I've seen in actual 20x24 print fashion, but only once in a book, is a rather late 8x10 shot he took from exactly the same turnout which every tour bus and tens of thousands of cars stop at every year. That doesn't stop it from being unique, even side by side with many other shots he took from that exact location. I went to Bodie once and set up a 4x5 shot. A Natl Geo dude was conducting a photo workshop and said to them, "Whatever that guy is doing, just copy him." So he dumped the whole class on me and ran off to do his own thing. Rude, but really no problem. They stood around me wildly snapshooting while I pressed the shutter only once. Not one of them got the shot I did. They would to have had in mind the exact composition I did, the same perspective, the same gear. A few inches either side, and nothing really worked except another old stuff scene. I had three compositional planes all precisely lined up which included a tiny little sparrow atop something constituting part of that linearity. They didn't even notice it. Had nothing to do with some postcard opportunity. But I never went back there. I don't like crowds. I did my best work after they all left for the day. I hope the NG idiot got his usual machine-gunned stereotypical images.
PRJ,
I second Tin Can's comments. Your image is of a considerably older and larger tree--and all the other elements of the image combine to make it distinct. I actually prefer your composition.
Keith
"...the sincerest form of flattery..."
I am reminded of the saying "you can't step in the same river twice". My brother-in-law, a philosophy professor, tells me that quote is from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. So it's not news that we can't actually "plagiarize" another photographer's work. It also reminds me of the quote from Mark Twain, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes".
...btw the Richard Whelan book I mentioned earlier is called "Double Take"; recommended.
I wouldn't set foot in the Merced at all in Yosemite Valley. It's pretty contaminated in summer, like a bathtub being used by thousands of people on the same day. Up in the headwaters in the SE quadrant of the Park it's incredibly clean because nobody is around. You can walk for a week without seeing another person.
I am enjoying the responses. Of course, there is no such thing as photography plagiarism. I thought that was illustrated in the two photos I posted to introduce this thread, and the accompanying comment. What should have been gleaned, was the idea of inspiration; that is what really matters. Those who photograph in places such as Yosemite and elsewhere, are very likely inspired by those who worked in the area before them, not seeking old tripod holes, but rather a personal interpretation of those magical places. Some very fine examples of their success are posted on this forum.
Did I mention inspiration? So many great photographs yet to be made.
Merg
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