Since I write a lot of essays and articles and post to some 20,000 or so readers, I like to include an image along with the text to set the mood or reflect the topic. This can be a photo I take or a photo I license for use, and in the last couple years this has turned into a graphic image created by AI through (in my case) AI graphic software called “Midjourney.”
For these articles or essays, most often I am not looking for personal memorials, like snapshots of family or events, but rather by illustrations that evoke moods or feelings.
Although I always state if an image is AI prompted, most or many of my readers continue to see this image as a photograph, per se and congratulate me for the ‘photo’ even though I always post this disclaimer.
[Midjourney graphic prompted by me.]
I see in the future of photography two main roads or paths, taking photographs for family and personal documentation or memories, like snapshots, and impersonal illustrations that eventually will be better made though AI photography, where the supercomputer becomes effectively the camera whenever the goal is illustration rather than the memorial of something. Of course, I will continue to take traditional photos as I always have, with camera and lens, and just for the ‘art’ of photography.
It's like the question, which is more important, the razor or the shave? The shave is what we are after, not what kind of razor is used to get a shave.
It’s the same with photography. Which is more important, the image or the camera (how we made the image). I know photographers are having a fit about AI images just now, but that will fade out, IMO.
It’s the image that is important and not ONLY how we make it. Having made about 15,000 AI graphic images to date, I well know that prompting an image is not a walk in the park, but requires skill, hard work, and many iterations to get a good image.
Of course, a photography photo with camera and lens, by definition, will always be just that. However, after about 18 years of writing a daily article or blog, I tired of licensing photos, not because they were so expensive (although they can be), but because the selection was so difficult, and the time spent to find one so arduous.
When I first ventured into AI graphics, some years ago, the results were almost laughable, like cartoons, but as time progressed, they have gotten better and better.
And many early adopters that I knew were thrilled and considered their AI images works of art, and themselves artists, although I never saw that in their work. And, as time passed, most of these artists dropped out and disappeared. Instead, I always saw AI images not as art but as ‘illustrations’ and heaven knows I needed illustrations.
And so, fast forward to today, when AI is doing a pretty good job at illustration, I have to struggle to find one of my photos that is good enough AND will fit enough with the topic to be used. Sometimes I just post a photo I took anyway. LOL.
The takeaway for me is that AI is no threat to any kind of photography I do, because it does not contain any personal elements other than what I choose to put into it.
However, and this is important, more and more of the time AI images comes increasingly closer to satisfying what I consider important to have in a photo, however it is made.
And so, while I don’t fancy myself as an artist, I am becoming a better and better illustrator and AI images are doing things for me that I could never do (or would bother to do) myself. I wonder what readers here have to say about this.
Here are a couple of AI images used for an article on grains.
