another piece for my "Man's Idea of Nature" series. We have this row of 25ish trees that all look eerily similar. 25 little lollipops lining the road. Very contrived, very manufactured, extremely insulting IMO. A little splash of nature to fit neatly into the tiny space that the developer decided will have some trees. Some small, uniform, very manageable trees and now we can check the "nature" checkbox on our developing requirements. Don't want our nature to be overly natural, after all.
Wow. I think I just mini-ranted. Anyway.
19 June 2012
by Marm O. Set, on FlickrT2i
EF-S 18-55 IS
18mm
shutter speeds ranging from 1/125th to 1/250th
f/8
ISO 400
combined in PS CS5
While I don't necessarily agree with your anger, I think that your concept is pretty darn cool (if anything, at least you HAVE a concept, you're trying to convey a message, and you're thinking about overall presentation).
That being said...I'm not sure that those five trees are sufficient. I mean, I see that they are all nearly identical, but what those five images does NOT convey is the sheer SCALE of nature as a mass-created product.
I generally try to avoid comments such as "What I'd like to see is...". Because really, what I'd like to see is irrelevant, and I have no idea if you tried what I'm about to suggest.
But I'm gonna do that anyway. What I'd like to see is just a LOT of these photographs presented in a way (physical media, not digital) which just inundates me with pointless repetition. Would it look stupid? Probably. Would it be painful and/or boring and tedious to look at? Maybe. Would the images be redundant? I almost guarantee it.
But would it better get your message across? Maybe not, but I think it's worth a try.
And can you think of anyone else who did that? Like, done a massive series of 3 dozen prints, with each individual image almsot a clone of all the others, and with the express intent of making viewers want to STOP looking at that after the first few images? I don't know. Bit I can't think of anyone who did anything like that. If I ever walked into a gallery and saw that kind of crap, I'd probably be annoyed as hell. But I'll be damned if I wouldn't remember it, because I have NEVER seen anyone do that **** before.
Anyway, never mind about me saying that I'd "like to see that". I wouldn't like that at all, I'd probably HATE it. But...that's kind of the entire POINT, isn't it? I guarantee...this kind of thing (if done right), could very likely piss me off AND be memorable AND make me totally love it in a weird and sadistic way.
Again...I hate comments like "you should do this." But have you tried doing that? Have you considered trying to do that? Again...I don't neessarily agree with your take on the issue, but I think that the overall idea is valid as hell. And though what you've shown is very cool, I don't think you've quite gone far enough. Because looking at those images in that nice tidy easy-to-look-at presentation DOESN'T quite convey the sentiments that you expressed. It's a start, but I think it could maybe stand to be taken farther (and not necessarily in the way that I suggested).
) because I'd rather have quality over quantity. Many times I end up forcing a photo just to post something. I'd rather not have posted the 5 trees in the format that they got posted... I would much rather post a final project (or 
) I am hoping to get a bunch of trees (50? 100?) that look so similar that the viewer automatically assumes they are all the same tree. Just like you said, overwhelm the viewer and make him mad that you wasted his time with the same photo over and over and over and over...
