This is weird - or I'm just easily entertained

[sf]

Look at this shot of the Seine by BLC :

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=28526

and then at my shot :

http://www.shutterflower.com/seinneRFF.jpg

We were standing in just about exactly the same spot on that path. LONG path, if you've ever walked it. Looks like BLC was standing just a couple feet to the right, but if you look at hte trees' branches, the bench, and all that, it is pretty much exactly the same spot.

I just think that is really weird. Really unlikely, even though Paris is so photographed.

Am I just obviously bored?

 

[Ken F.]

Yup, I've noticed the same thing with a few of my photos from Italy.
Both are very nice!

Cheers,
kf

 

[RayPA]

It's the same spot, but judging by the little tree next to the bench, your photo came first. 🙂 At least the tree is smaller (assuming it's the same tree--could have been replanted) (?).


🙂

 

[sf]

And we both chose the vertical format!

 

[ch1]

Yeah.

It reminds me of all of the folks who've taken the same exact shot of the Brooklyn Bridge arches as I did!! 😱

Darn those pedestrian venues!

Kinda makes you wonder if there are any "original" photos in the world left to be taken! 😀

 

[sf]

Well, BLC's pic is as original as mine or anyone else's. The lighting in BLC's is unique. The moment is what RF photography is about. More than anything.

 

[ch1]

Hehe. I shot 2 rolls of B&W at the Burrard Station this afternoon. A Skytrain Attendant asked me if I'm taking pictures. I replied, "IS THIS AGAINST THE LAW??!!" He said, "No," and left me alone. Then I shot another roll on the street out from my car. 😀 😀 😀

Yes, cause he's seen it all before.

Kinda what I mean.

Not to be too philosophical becaue I got to get to bed but are there any really "original" pictures anymore?

I know that there are new people on the same old streets. And there are new streets with the same old people etc.

But sometimes I wonder, can anyone really shoot an truly original "reality" picture anymore. Not an "image" of something that is PS's and certainly portraits and nudes are still (more or less) unique.

But if you or I go to Paris or Melbourne or Los Angeles (as examples) tomorrow and shoot a ton of film of local "venues" - will we ever really be confident that one of those shots is really a unique perspective?

Oh, I better get to bed now - getting too weirdly introspective! Morpheus calls, I must obey.... 😉

 

[amateriat]

Not to be too philosophical becaue I got to get to bed but are there any really "original" pictures anymore?

Yes.

I've had this proven to me over and over again, especially when I've come face-to-face with two of the most over-photographed icons on the planet, the Tour Eiffel and the Empire State Building. Being a New Yorker, I obviously have greater familiarity with the former, but I came back from my one visit to France with images of the tower which, if not necessarily unique, I regard as uncommon, although I know of one other photographer who got something similar, but obviously not the same (and, in my opinion, somewhat more interesting than mine).

In the case of that Wonder Of the World much closer to me, I was helping galfriend clear out the apartment of her deceased aunt a few years back. Taking a break out on the terrace one day, I noticed how interesting the ESB looked from this vantage point - fifteen floors up, looking Northeast from 8th Avenue in upper Chelsea. The next day I brought a camera and shot a roll of slide film. I looked at the results the next day: the building truly looked different from how I'd seen it in what must be thousands of photographs, which kept me coming back for close to a week tp photograph at different times of the day, and sometimes with different film types. Part of it was the vantage point, but the other part was the quality of light from this vantage point. I know somebody has to have photographed it in a near-similar fashion, but I doubt I'd ever run into either the photograph or its creator anytime soon, and that counts more than whether or not I'm the "only" person to have snapped a particular thing.

Maybe that should be the theme of an RFF book at some point: Someplace We've All Been: or, 46 Ways of Looking at a Landmark. The greatest creative challenge, to me, isn't in going where no lenssmith has gone before, but to draw mystery and wonder from the "over-familiar". You may discover you know less than you think you do.

(Happens to me all the time...)


- Barrett

 

[rover]

The guy on the bench must have gotten up to go potty.

 

[Steve B]

Yes.

The greatest creative challenge, to me, isn't in going where no lenssmith has gone before, but to draw mystery and wonder from the "over-familiar". You may discover you know less than you think you do.

(Happens to me all the time...)


- Barrett

Yup, that's the challenge. As regards uniqueness, I think that it helps if your mind is not filled with images that others have taken. I know its impossible but if you could photograph the Empire State Building or Delicate Arch without ever having seen another photograph of it I think you could build an argument for originality, even though its not. For instance, I do find that I can look at something far more objectively if I haven't been there or seen it before. My mind is not clouded with preconceptions of how it "should" look in a photograph. That being said I have had fun looking for and photographing things that very good photographers have done. Sort of like art students making a reproduction of a famous painting. It can be a good learning exercise.
As far as discovering that I know less than I think I do, yup, that also happens to me a lot, even though I don't really think I know that much. Pretty humbling!

 

[dazedgonebye]

Certainly the same location, but 2 very different ways of treating the subject.
Original ideas and subject matter may be hard to come by, but identical interpretations would be even less likely.

 

[John Camp]

Maybe one of the reasons for doing street photography is the possibility of something truly original; people always hold the possibility. Though I will say that since the expansion of the Internet, I've seen maybe a million too many nudes. So many that you might be better off just to hire a model and stare at her, for whatever that does for you, than to spend a lot of time messing with a camera. My age is showing here, but I've wondered, occasionally, exactly how many women have posed nude for publicly circulated photogaphs -- could it be in the millions? I'm sure there are millions of nudes on the web...when I was a kid, posing nude was a vaguely shocking thing, done only by people who smoked strange herbs and probably listened to jazz. In any case, not to ramble on too long, I can't imagine what it would take to present a really original-feeling nude photograph. Landscapes still hold some possibility, but it takes an unusual personality to find interesting ones. I may have also seen one too many slot canyons, to say nothing of b&W aspen trees in late afternoon sunshine...

All this said, I think I just thought of an original nude. Not that I'd have the guts to do it... 😛

JC

 

[ch1]

I live in NYC too. And I can assure everyone here that from every angle and perspective a shot has been taken over the past 75 years - the ESB has always posed NUDE! 😀 *

* That includes the times when those damned apes and their babes "hung" out! 😱