Why is it that with over 60 years of improvements in cameras, lens sharpness and film grain, resolution and dynamic range that no one has been able to equal what Ansel Adams did back in the 1940s?
Ansel didn't even have Photoshop! How did he do it? Most attempts fall short, some are as good but different like Jack Dykinga, but no one is equal.
Why is it that photographers loaded with the most extraordinary gear who use the internet to get the exact GPS coordinates of Jack's or Ansel's photo locations and hike out there with the image in hand to ensure an exact copy (illegal by US copyright laws and common decency), that they get something that might look similar, but lacks all the impact and emotion of the original they thought they copied?
I'm not kidding. You can read about a bunch of these turkeys here. They used university astronomers to predict the one time in almost two decades that the conditions would match and had 300 of the blind converge at just the right spot. They still didn't get the clouds, snow or shadows right. This makes Ansel cringe. Of course they didn't get anything like what they wanted: compelling photographs come from inspiration, not duplication.
Why is it that even though everyone knows that Photoshop can be used to take any bad image and turn it into a masterpiece, that even after hours of massaging it looks worse than when one started?
Maybe because it's entirely an artist's eye, patience and skill that makes an image and not his tools.
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