Sunday, February 10, 2008

Zone System Landscapes...haven't I seen that photo before?

Is it my imagination or does most zone system landscape stuff look alike? I often do searches online and look at various zone landscape stuff and it basically all looks the same. I get the feeling they were shot by the same guy using the same equipment and the same technique.

A club I belonged to for a while also had the same thing happening. I could not really tell individual differences in style between the various landscape zone photographers, I would generally just look at the different matting technique to guess who did what. If I did not look at the matting I could not really see differences in the prints.

I guess there might be slight differences in composition, lens, and film choices etc but damn if all that landscape zone stuff does not look twin like to me. Some photographers working in this area have individual vision but in my opinion the vast majority are creating the same pabulum over and over again.