What makes a photograph a rip-off?

[truehobbit]

Thanks Prim - I've had a look at google. Yes, I think many of the pictures couldn't be copied without a plagiarism suspicion because the lighting is so imaginative, and I think you're right that the "sharpness" is amazing.
There are some images where the lighting seems so unreal that it would count as invention.
Still, I don't think anyone taking a picture of a leafless oak that succeeded very well in showing the tree's shape and outline would be plagiarising Adams, because, again, the beauty of the motive will easily strike anyone who halfways has an eye for photography.
(In fact, I wouldn't hang the picture of this oak on my wall if it said "Ansel Adams" in fat latters underneath - because I still think the marvel is the oak, and not the photo, which is quite realistic and straightforward.)

[narya]

I saw a gallery display of Ansel Adams photographs mingled with photos of his contemporaries, done in the same style. Even though they were similar, there was something very distinct about Adams's photographs. There is a triangular arrangement about the photos that does not draw the viewer down into the center, as most classic paintings do, but flings the viewer out into the sky and the wider world. It's what made the photos so exhilarating and compelling. Or am I the only one that sees them this way?

Examples can be found here:
Tetons
Redwoods
Ferns

[Primula Baggins]

You may be onto something there, narya. What I find is that his compositions make me very aware that the world continues beyond the edges of the photo. It gives his images a presence and a size beyond the limits of the image itself. It's never "Here is a stand of trees" but "Here is one edge of a forest. . . ."

[Rodia]

Ansel Adams' photos never really had an impact on me. I don't really know why, they just seem very ordinary to me. Granted, I haven't seen all of them.