Really, M.A.L.adies? Jim Zuckerman???

In another of their "let's bash people who think Marc Adamus is good" routines, the M.A.L.adies reach back to find a supporter's post from over a year ago on DPReview, and comment as follows:

Best landscape photographer he has ever seen? Perhaps Daniel Ewert hasn't heard of REAL photographers such as Frans Lanting, Galen Rowell, Jim Zuckerman, or David/Marc Muench, all of whom create stunning images without hours of photoshop manipulation.

O.K. Rowell and the Muenches I can agree with. I'm not as big a fan of Frans Lanting as others, but I'll grant he's a respected nature/landscape photographer. But Jim Zuckerman?

First of all, Zuckerman isn't even a landscape photographer, he's a travel/commercial photographer. And to hold him up as an exemplar of unprocessed images? Would you describe this image as "unprocessed?" What about this one, or this one, or this one? Does this seem unprocessed to you? What about this, or this, or this?

Don't get me wrong -- Jim Zuckerman is a talented conceptual photographer. But he's practically the king of the "create a new reality in Photoshop" school. Compared to him, Marc Adamus (and virtually every other landscape photographer working today) is a strict, monkish purist when it comes to post-processing. Invoking Zuckerman as a role-model for unprocessed landscape photography only proves that the M.A.L.adies know absolutely nothing of what they're talking about.

But, then again, we didn't need this example to know that, did we?