WARNING: Rant ahead - and it's only slightly tongue-in-cheek.

I've had enough!

And finally I'm going to do something about it.

I've commented before on the lamentable frequency with which this one mountain features in British landscape photography, but twice in the last two issues of AP is just too much. When I started photography back in the 70s it was Ashness Bridge - you couldn't turn a dozen pages of any photography magazine without being confronted by yet another picture of the same scene, taken from more or less the same position, looking in the same direction. (And if you went to the Lake District, there wasn't a newsagent's or gift shop in the entire county that didn't have at least half a dozen versions available in the postcard stands.) Then in the 80s we got Eilean Donan Castle ad nauseam. And for some years now it has been the Buachaille Etive Mor, with just as much lack of originality.

So, sad bastard that I am, I decided to count the instances of the BEM cropping up in AP in 2007. And the answer was 12. Twelve pictures of just that one landscape! One of them even included the bleeding bloody Black Rock bloody Cottage, and that, I'm afraid, should be a hanging offence. There was also one Eilean Donan shot, but I'll let that go.

Are landscape enthusiasts not ashamed to be simply repeating the same shots that so many others have taken before? I certainly would be. It's not as though there aren't enough other mountains in Scotland or the rest of the UK to be able to find something different to shoot. Have they no imagination? Is driving up the A82 and snapping what they see at the side of the road really all the effort they are prepared to make, or all the challenge they are up for? If twelve street photographers had independently photographed the same craggy-faced old tramp and got their pictures into the mag, wouldn't we think something wasn't quite right? At the very least I reckon the tramp would deserve a substantial modelling fee.

So, here and now I am commencing a 'Buachaille Etive Mor Watch' in the hope of shaming landscapists into actually looking for something else to photograph, and, for that matter, AP into choosing different images to print. Every time I find another published picture of the wretched lump I shall increment my count by one. I might even write to the editor! And if the offending image is in a competition I shall count it twice, because there's even less excuse for that.

Let's see if 2008 is any improvement - I'd like to see that BEM count at least halved, if not reduced to one or two. Please, British landscapists, make some effort to find original images - photograph something different. Don't be satisfied with just producing your own versions of everyone else's clichés. And please, AP, do your bit to encourage originality by not accepting the same old subjects over and over again.

Okay, rant over. I'm glad I got that off my chest. :-)