Interlude - Not the Same Photograph

I wish I’d taken a moment to step back and photograph the row of photographers along the Snake River at Schwabacher Point or Oxbow Bend during our morning photo shoots at Grand Teton National Park a few years ago.  While the images we made those mornings were beautiful, what wasn’t shown was quite disturbing (not to mention the attitudes of some of the photographers).  It left us with the question of whether everyone was making the same photograph at the same time.  You can repeat that same concern about any number of places like Yosemite and elsewhere around the world.  

It’s a bit different when we’re out by ourselves somewhere and it’s just the two of us, even if it’s Valley View in Yosemite at midnight.  Nobody else is making our photographs.  But folks have asked us if we take the same photographs given that we are both photographers and are so frequently at the same place.

Much of the time, when we get somewhere Ann and I head off in somewhat different locations based upon something very different that attracts us.  However, often times our paths intersect, either together or separated in time, and we photograph the same thing.  

As noted in the previous post, that happened to us along an unnamed tributary to Deer Creek on the Burr Trail.  I’d photographed in both directions of the creek and Ann wound up coming over to where I was.  She first looked down the stream in the direction I took the first image from the last blog post, but concluded that there was not much there given the harshness of the light from the rising sun.  So she turned in the direction of my second photograph.

The rock surface we were on wasn’t much larger than a small bedroom and Ann wasn’t more than 6 feet away from where I photographed from.  In fact, I had to move from my second spot, so she could make her photograph and not have to worry about me knocking her tripod legs (which led me to see the composition that was my third image of the previous blog post).  Ann was, however, a bit up-slope from me.

So, here’s the question, do Ann and I make the same images when we’re photographing pretty much from the same spot?  You be the judge.

I’ll start with my image from the previous post:

And Ann’s version:

I was there, and for the life of me I can’t even figure out where I made my composition from Ann’s image.  

So, no.  Personally, I have no worries that Ann and I are making the same photographs, even if we are standing in the same place.