The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Vemödalen, noun...read the definition here. (Very short, and not off-topic.)

Made me laugh, although it's about two-thirds funny and the other third sad.

Mike
(Thanks to Sean Murphy)

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ned Bunnell: "In case you haven't seen it, the author of Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koening, gives a more detailed definition of the word in this video."

Morgan: "I'm pretty sure this has already been blogged about somewhere...."

Speed: "If I take a picture of the Eiffel Tower, Washington Monument, Grand Canyon or the neighbor's cat, it's not just another picture. It's my picture. It is a record of my presence and a way to refresh and remind my volatile and fallible memory. At some point it replaces and becomes my memory."

Ernest Zarate: "Why is this a fear? I look at it as liberating! My photography professor at the San Francisco Art Institute stated decades ago that there was nothing new to photograph, only new ways to see the raw material (i.e., subject matter, to put it coarsely), as I've stated here before, to some derision. The goal then is to challenge oneself to create something new from the common and known. This has always been photography's challenge. If you know your history of the medium, you know this is true. I have always found that statement from my professor to be a release, not a condemnation as some have construed it."

Sal Santamaura: "My primary photographic interest is making images of the landscape using large format view cameras. In addition to TOP, I visit (and participate in) the large format forum daily. For the very reason captured by 'Vemödalen,' I stopped clicking on the 'Large Format Landscapes' thread soon after it was begun. Seven and a half years later, it includes 11,911 posts and has been viewed 2,271,872 times. I don't want to look at it. I photograph the landscapes I visit to both remember places I've 'discovered' and, hopefully, create images I'll enjoy in the future. Most of it really has been done before; why spoil the fun for myself?"

Gordon Cahill: "Well since for my personal photography at least I'm just as interested in the process of taking a photograph, as the end result, this isn't a fear I possess. I've spent many a sunrise with a thermos of coffee waiting for the light only to come home empty-handed. Some of the most enjoyable moments I've ever had. And like Mahn England [in another comment —Ed.], I've also got home recently from Uluru (two weeks ago). I'm sure it all been done before but the photo that's going on my wall was made by my hand and I feel no issue with others having remarkably similar images."

Mike replies: This comment made me feel better. Good for you Gordon.

Comments

[Mahn England]

That's the word I've been searching for!

Recently returned from the outback and opening my images of Uluru (Ayres Rock) at sunset that's what I felt.

Still it had to be done.

[Rick Wilcox]

I'm reminded of the Peggy Lee song, "Is That All There Is?"

[D.C.Wells]

I find it interesting that in searching for the unique, or at least the unusual, photograph to make and thinking we have made it, we unknowingly repeat the shot made by so many others. Is that an occasion for sorrow or an affirmation of our being human? That we have senses and sensibilities that are (in) common but not necessarily mean?
Michael Medford talks about parking lots in Yosemite being placed in the spots that Ansel Adams probably placed his tripod to take some of his famous photographs. One explanation is that photographers trying to emulate AA pulled off there so often that the park had to build a pull-out to handle traffic. Another is that many, photographers and not, saw the same beauty AA saw in those places and stopped to absorb it.

[Mike Plews]

Slot canyons

[Bryce Lee]

Without the medium entitled photography in all its forms none of this on-line statement and the renderings wouuld have been possible for us the viewer
to review time and again.

[matthew]

Is there a word for doing something original but then getting shot down because it violates "the rules"?

[JWNova]

Sorrow is watching all those people holding their cameras the wrong way. Too many chicken wings out there.

[Hugh Crawford]

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." - Heraclitus ( or the Buddha )

[Robert Roaldi]

You could argue that making love has been done many times before, and in similar ways. Doesn't mean we should stop, does it? Geez, I hope not.

[Dan]

https://xkcd.com/1314/

[Jan Rudziński]

That photo was taken 31 years ago during my holidays in Greece.
http://cdn.blabler.pl/image/1FId

How many similar photos of the same object has been taken since?

[Dave New]

That's why you develop a personal style, so that the images you make are your own, and others will recognize them as such.

When I go to places like Antelope Canyon, White Sands, Death Valley, etc. etc., I strive to make those images my own through the expression of my vision and emotion I feel while viewing the scene and composing my photos.

If I can convey just a small amount of that vision and emotion to my audience then I've succeeded.

[Gato]

A photographer friend of mine used to say, "I know it's been done before, but I haven't done it yet."

For myself, there are a great many photos I pass up because they have been done too often, and a good many I make only as personal souvenirs with no intention of ever showing them to anyone.

I don't have any real problem with people making the same photos as everyone else (unless they try to claim it as art or original) but I do sometimes wonder why they do it.

[Speed]

Last trip I considered putting my camera in the overhead because I'd already taken every interesting picture that can be taken through an airplane window.

I didn't and I hadn't.

[Mattias]

Being Swedish I was a bit confused by this word, which seemed both very familiar and strange to me. I found this explanation by Koening himself:

"The word, while made up, is indeed derived from the Swedish vemod, "tender sadness, pensive melancholy" + Vemdalen, the name of a Swedish town, which is IKEA's product naming convention—the original metaphor for this idea was that these clichéd photos are a kind of prefabricated furniture that you happen to have built yourself. (As a side note, the umlaut isn't proper Swedish, but I liked the idea of a little astonished face (ö) sitting in the middle of the word.)"

However, the umlaut over o is proper Swedish.

[Christer Almqvist]

Everything has already been photographed. But not by everyone.

(Adapted by Lisette Model (The Misfits photographer) from Karl Valentin: Everything has already been said ...)

[San Warzoné]

"The Voyage of discovery lies not in finding New Landscapes, but in having New Eyes"
by Marcel Proust

[I suspect that's sort of an "Internetization" of the quote that might derive from a TED talk by Pico Iyer. I found this:

"The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is (Le seul véritable voyage, le seul bain de Jouvence, ce ne serait pas d'aller vers de nouveaux paysages, mais d'avoir d'autres yeux, de voir l'univers avec les yeux d'un autre, de cent autres, de voir les cent univers que chacun d'eux voit, que chacun d'eux est); and this we can contrive with an Elstir, with a Vinteuil; with men like these we do really fly from star to star.”

Remembrance of Things Past [1913-1927]
Vol. V, The Captive [1923], ch. II "The Verdurins Quarrel with M. de Charlus." (C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation, 1929)

Courtesy "chickadee34."

--Mike]

[Dave Jenkins]

Well, for at least once in my life I think I succeeded in photographing something that has been photographed many times in a way no one else has photographed it. I guess that's my 15 minutes of fame.
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2015/06/random-excellence-quote-o-the-day.html

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Vemödalen? Bah! Just stand on those dark footprint spots and take the darn picture. You'll love it!

[Robert Fogt]

I'm reminded of a quote from Minor White: “One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.” And while the first may be immutable, the second can be as many different things as there are people to take that picture.

[Speed]

Remember Kodak Photo Spots? I have several pictures of them in Disney parks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_Photo_Spot