Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.
Ansel Adams
Normally I do not participate in landscape, seascape, whatever scape photography is the flavor of the month unless it is something unconventional. Nothing against Ansel Adams the zone system is indelibly linked to him, it’s just not as interesting to me. Blame my photography professor that asked me…
“Do you just want to make pretty pictures…it’s alright if you do, I’m just curious…”
When I created the image alien topographic I was swatting at a constant bombardment of mosquito’s busily dive bombing me while staring at a thick green carpet of algae clogging half a pond. When I displayed it for critique in historical perspectives one of the students made the statement “It’s a typical landscape” and the rest of the class must have silently agreed because they had already disregarded the image without thinking about what they were actually looking at.
The dialogue may have ended on that blanket statement until someone pointed out it was in actuality an algae ridden landscape. Something not normally associated with a “pretty picture” although also not aesthetically challenged to qualify as an ugly duckling.