Paul,
Excellent post. I've felt for years that Ansel Adams couldn't
got a photo into a magazine today (assuming his name wasn't
known)--they would be rejected as not being original.
But people still buy his prints. Yet, for example, he
might get an image like moon over half dome into a magazine if
he colored the moon purple, the sky yellow, the rocks green
and did some bizarre blurring to the print.

Roger
http://clarkvision.com

PWW wrote:

Brian; I guess it depends on the intended clients. Originality is a very
good goal, but can be taken to extreme and thusly ends in ridiculous images.
An Example: a few years back some fancy well known Art Teacher took a camera
and just waved it around shooting photos without a purpose except to get
"original" photos. The images were absolutely horrible (IMHO) but the
newspaper did a big story on him and apparently the galleries thought they
were great. In reality, name sells better than image anyway.

One could say he was original even even creative. But personally, IMHO, I
thought it was ludicrous. And the images without merit.

Another example was when I used to do Fine Art Shows. All the photographers
and artists would send in very arty photos to the jury to get into the
shows, but once in, they showed and sold more "standard" images to the
patrons of the fine art show. If they sent to the jury what they sold they
could not get juried in and if they showed in their booth what they sent to
be juried in they did not sell much. Different clients!

My theory and my journey is figure out, what does tickle my emotions in a
visual scene and be able to isolate and expand those emotional elements
along with the tricks of being able to place a three dimensional scene onto
a two dimensional image. I don't even think about trying to make an image
like no one has every done it before. Maybe, there are reasons why nobody
has done it like before. :-) I don't try to copy others either, I just do
it my own way.
PWW
--
PWW (Paul Wayne Wilson)
Over 1,000 Photographs Online at,
http://PhotoStockFile.com