Once again, the more things change the more they stay
the same. Except, maybe, when it's not the case. Not really. Or perhaps more accurately what goes around comes around - but this time it didn't.
Evidently the skies were in an exact approximation at Yosemite of the time Ansel Adams shot one of his famous works, Autumn Moon: the High Sierra From Glacier Point. Hordes of photographers descended to reconstruct the event.
Only it wasn't the same.
"We're missing the clouds, and we're missing the snow, but otherwise I think I can approximate the image," one of them was quoted as saying.
Hello? We're missing two of the major physical components of the piece, but since the sky is in cooperation re-do it. More to the point, why?
I guess my handy dandy Concise Oxford Dictionary has the answer:
emulate * v * attempt to match or surpass, typically by imitation.
The most important component, the genius of creation, belongs to someone else - and that simply can't be copied.
A quote from Ansel Adams: "I don't take pictures, I make them."
He did alot of darkroom work . . . or some might call it old-school photoshop.
Posted by: bob | September 20, 2005 at 10:32 AM