AI is coming to the photography community like a freight train out of control. This is either going to be a huge breakthrough in allowing photographers who are not interested in the ‘craft’ just the output to be “Majestic AF” or it will be another disappointment in the loss of humanity in photography.
Whichever side you are on makes no difference.
Various comments I have heard:
“Well, it’s just like digital and every technical advance so far.”
“Photographers hate change.”
“It’s just another tool in the photographer’s arsenal, don’t worry about it.”
And I don’t ‘worry’ about it. It is coming and coming fast.
However, there are some things that I do think about as we all get ready for this new and exciting loss of control and input in order to advance our ‘art’…
Digital was simply another way of doing the same thing we always did, but with new technology that changed the TECHNICAL aspects of making an image.
Photographers do hate change. I have been a photographer for far too long to not recognize that obvious trait. But is this ‘change’ or a complete abandon of the photographer’s input. Is it a painting if the pallet fell off the chair and splattered across a canvas? (Well, in the highly bullshit infested NY Post Modernist world, it most likely is.)
If the photographer or artist didn’t control the process somehow, was it a process after all? And without the input from the artist, was the output genuinely theirs? In the classical meaning of the word.
Back when I wrote music I would occasionally have sections that would use “chance” as a compositional tool. “Chance” was when you left part or all of the sounds/speed/rhythm to the players themselves and there was little to no notation.
It was an opportunity to let parts of the music be improvised and shaped by the players themselves. This would stand in contrast to the notated sections and guarantee that every performance would be different – in those sections – than any other performance.
That was not AI, it was improvisation.
I used it as a tool in my ‘arsenal’ of compositional techniques. Tone Row / 12 tone, electronics, mixed rhythms, and improvisation.
But what if I had placed microphones in 10 different practice rooms (at ASU we had a whole floor of practice rooms) and simply recorded what was happening and called it MINE? That means that all I did was take the recording and claim it… done.
Again, the Post Modern bullshitters may have gone that direction, but they are mostly bullshit and make no difference to anything.
In fact, that was NOT my music, all I had done is to record something someone else did without any input from me.
Had I taken that recording into a mixer and CREATED something from the snippets and the sounds from the practice rooms, then I would be using that fodder for an actual piece I created. And that could be considered a composition. I made choices and I made decisions and controlled the process.
(BTW, yeah, I did that piece. It was 6 minutes of cacophony… but it was MY cacophony, chosen, decided upon, manipulated, changed… I provided the process and oversaw the production to make it mine.)
And that is where I have to wonder about the AI thing coming so fast. The photographer makes the fodder (like the practicing musicians provided me) but the actual output is controlled by a set of mathematical algorithms designed to make the most ‘acceptable’ presentation of the image.
And if two photographers were standing next to each other equipped with the same lens choice and similar cameras, the AI would produce the same image. No room for input in the post-processing, just ‘plug and play’ and get the photograph a machine thought would please the most people based on NO EMPATHY or emotion, just numbers.
I think that is quite a bit different than Photoshop, LR, C1, or even the application of a free filter. It is the relinquishing of the image creation to something that is not me. Never will be me.
I will most likely not be working with AI, as you can tell. I will be watching it, and learning what it can – and cannot – do.
But I will not spend a single moment worrying about it or giving a shit. People are gonna do it anyway, so I just gotta hunker down and continue trying to make MY images and hoping to get a handle on the total creative process.
