Part 4 of 5, I hope to answer that question and examine why
There was a saying in the business of Advertising, “If we can make the person looking at the ad, stop and look at it for 7 to 1O seconds before turning the page, then creative team who put the AD together did their job 100% perfect and the additional time the person looks and reads is just more gravy for our client. Today with all the images and overly saturated visually the time been cut in half… If I can hold your attention for 3 to 5 secs or more, the ad is a success, any more time spent looking at it, perfect.
So back to the main question, is Photography or Photographers making images going to perish.
The answer I believe is this. Not a chance, what will happen that has been happening for the past 20 yrs since the day photoshop was created is a weeding out or the cream of the crop will rise and still get clients and be leaders in the industry of image making.
WHO’S BETTER AT CREATING YOUR IMAGES, AI or YOURSELF?
AI or other improvement is only another tool that a photographer/image maker has. As much as I use my eyes looking through my camera, I first use my brain to start working on an image I have in mind. Whether I can do it with AI or with glass and light really doesn’t matter to me, as long as I get my best end result in the image I’m after. What I don’t like about AI so far, what I’ve experienced, and can look too good and end up looking fake or looking entirely fake. At one time during the 1980s, the image in ads or feeling the photo had was reflections of how the country felt as a whole. If the country was in great progressive times, the imagery was sharp clean and tight bright colors. When the country was stagnating at a low imagery was soft mute undefined or ethereal. I’m not saying this was a deliberate way the ad industry was seeing society this way, but perhaps the general feeling affected everyone, including image makers.
I think that is the main point of AI, it is machine made, and it is faux image making… You’re not taking your artist skills and applying them directly to something you can hold in your hand and feel. An object in front of the camera to photograph is far different than a image produce out of words and the computers idea from zillion of similar images existing from other photographers for the final image.
With a lit bit of art knowledge and some keywords, anyone can type it in and then wait to see what pops out. Is that your best, is that you? Do you have any challenge making the image or have to solve the problem of creating with light an image the client is so happy to have because you’re understanding their exact needs? As I see it, AI art is like a one of the paint spinning machine you may have seen at a art fair or carnival. You squirt a bunch of favorite colors into a spinning box with a small 8 x 10 white cardboard spinning faster than your blender could, for a minute or two and wait until you see what comes outs out. Will it be just what you wanted? Can the image stand time or more likely something you either toss away months later or in the next few days.
If you are making an image with a camera, and you’re after an image you have in your head or staring at the client layout, you’re not just tossing in a bunch of key word and let’s see what we get approach. You are using your photography skills, experiences, your art education background, your understanding of what the makes people stop and look and read, The psychology of how a highlight affect how long you stare at the image. Does a computer understand the decades of the subtleties used by high end commercial photographers in how to make an image a successful one for your client? That’s probably a question you can ask yourself, How as a imagemaker/photographer take AI and use to better my image making ability without destroying my own style. Being able to use your own photos with AI is a big step in the right direction.
WHAT GETS REPLACED TO SAVE MORE?
In the days photoshop came out, the result was a weeding out the entire creative industry. The ad agencies decided they no longer needed retouchers, experienced photographers or the experienced art directors and creative directors. Since we have this great new tool, and we can get the kids out of college to use it and save money and time. So new art directors were hired, they hired their photographer friends out of college who had no studio or life experience behind a studio camera. And agencies started the in-house studio.
After a year or so, the agencies but more so the clients realized the time and cost for retouching and photography went up 3 times than before. The wave of fresh out of college photographers had problems understanding the real ins and outs of lighting and solving on set problems fast. If they couldn’t do something easy as an experience studio photographer could , example create a specific highlight or get rid of a nasty shadow, the AD and young photographer would just say something like….Oh, we can fix that in Photoshop, so no big deal. Bang! Something that could be remedied very quick by a seasoned pro ended up cost 1000s in post.
The bean counters in the agencies saw photoshop retouching time go through the roof and unhappy clients with unsatisfactory photography and sky-high digital retouching cost. After that what quickly happen the experienced art directors and creative directors were asked to come back by the agencies. They did but not until a nice raise was given to them. The Agencies hired back the experience photographer who at this point were already leading the industry in using photoshop along with the decades of behind the camera and photographic lighting skills.
So will AI replace the photographer, I doubt it, but what does happen is either you use AI as just another tool like photoshop or uploading your own photos and improving upon them or getting variations of the original.
The only thing you can do is get with it and figure out how you can use it for your clients and your portfolio work.
BRAIN POWER
Capturing an image can be an exciting, thrilling, brain expanding problem-solving experience. The brain work that can go into the set and the blending of art direction and photographic skills that come together to get the image you are both after, putting your heart and soul into it will always be better than typing hour upon hours of words making a computer understand what you want. And probably having to be just satisfied with what you got but not overly ecstatic unless you can accept what pops out of AI is mostly of what you did not create but zillions of other artist and photographers did and AI is just spinning those colors.
