Do you own the copyright on your barn, windmill, cows, and the rusty Ford, the ground they're on, and the sky behind them?If he created any of those objects himself and they contain creative elements (e.g. the architecture of the barn) , then yes, he automatically holds the the copyright to those creative elements.
No, nor could you.Not true. You don't know much about US copyright law. (And ignorance is no excuse)
In addition to that, the photographer is not diverting revenue from you, they are not stealing or infringing or profiting against your loss. You had nothing to gain from it before and nothing to gain from it nowAgain, not true. He has lost the ability to charge the photographer the fee he might otherwise have collected.
Furthermore, it is entirely legal to sell a photograph of anything you capture from a public location, provided you have releases from any people prominently visible in the image (not required for journalism).Huh? Not true at all. Just because the copying occurred in a public place does not make it legal. If the photographer's photo is copied from the "public" internet, does that make it legal? Of course not. So why do you think it's OK to "steal" from farmers but not photographers?) That sounds rather hypocritical to me.
On top of that, the photograph is protected by copyright because it is an original creation;No, it's a derivative work. So the copyright stays with the original creator (the farmer).
you yourself have not contributed to that creation,Again, not true. The farmer created the original creative elements.
although individual elements in the photo (perhaps a house you designed yourself) could be considered original.Exactly. So the photograph is a derivative work and is thus infringing the original creator's (the farmer's) copyright.
That's the way copyright works. You sound like some hypocritical photographer who thinks copyright laws were written to protect just you and nobody else. What you need to realize is that if the principles of creative ownership are equally applied, you won't be left with much outside of nature scenes that you can legally photograph without "permission". How does that strike you?
