I do some hobby photography, but nothing worth monetizing so we may not share the same views. I get what you're saying, but I would honestly say the same thing

I do some hobby photography, but nothing worth monetizing so we may not share the same views. I get what you're saying, but I would honestly say the same thing of the original photograph. Its bog-standard "serious and a little melancholic", with the only really notable part being the subject. The execution is certainly talented (far better than I could muster), but I've gone for this "look" in a bunch of portraits and I've never seen this photo before this article. I guess what I'm saying is that if the client asked for a serious portrait of a person, this is basically exactly what my mind thinks of. Serious facial expression, dark vignette, grayscale; the hand is the only part that isn't a cliche at this point. Photography is kind of a weird space for this, imo, because it captures something that actually existed, almost exactly (minus editing). I.e. what would it look like if someone drew/painted/tattooed Miles Davis doing that gesture without using that photo as a reference? How much prompting would it take for them to replicate this photo? I suspect if you asked an artist for "a brooding Miles Davis making a shhh gesture" you'd get something remarkably close to this. I'm rambling a bit, but I do think creativity in photography as it relates to copyright is an interesting question. The medium demands that the subject and pose are real, and there's certainly creativity in choosing those, but to what degree does the photographer own "that subject in that pose"? > And for the fact that Kat Von D's own legal team has been quite aggressive in pursuing other artists reproducing, sorry, "transforming" her work. I'm not really familiar with Kat Von D, but that's disappointing if true. I tried to search, but the results are flooded with this exact case at the moment and gave up after 3 pages of results.