Like Getting Hit In the Face With a Bag of Pythons, I Finally Understand AI
Not the process of AI, I got that. I finally figured out the disconnect and I can't stop seeing it everywhere.
Early yesterday morning, I was watching a YouTube video on creating a better landing page, and I had to stop it and take a beat.
BOOM… I finally understood.
And though the idea of actually being hit in the head with a bag-o-snakes was purely metaphorical, it felt nearly as real.
I was watching a young designer working with Midjourney as he developed a hero section for a website in production.
“I need a killer shot of a shoe”, he said as he headed for Discord.
Of course, I thought, "Yes, you do. Why aren’t you going to shoot it, or grab a stock photo?”
Of course, I am in my photographer mode. I make photographs, so I would think he was talking about the same thing.
A photograph. An artifact based on some level of reality.
It is what someone who has spent 50 years behind a camera would think.
But he wasn’t.
Not even close.
He wasn’t at all interested in how the image was fashioned, created, made, only that it looked cool.
And I instantly, totally, 100% got it.
That’s when the bag full of snakes made its entrance.
Why SHOULD he care?
I am in love with the photographic image; he is in love with an image, a cool picture of something.
He was raised on the internet, comic books, and superhero movies, and all of the unreal, non-authentic art that he consumed became his basis for aesthetics.
I grew up without that sort of, what… mythology?
Maybe.
Photographs are two-dimensional representations of a place, or person, or a thing. They are artifacts of the real world. Even Uelsmann based his fantasy work on real photographic artifacts.
We had Life magazine, the heyday of advertising, movies that pushed the envelope with camera tricks, but were still pretty grounded.
Along the way, Mrs. Robinson was supplanted by Peter Parker. Exotic locations were ditched for green screens, film was cut out for video, then digital. Reality was our base point, and even Captain Kirk was just a cop show on a bad set.
Bullit had a cool car chase, and of course, there was rock music where musicians actually wrote and played their own music. On Instruments!
But this young man grew up on fantasy, art created on a computer, realistic-looking video games, and no expectations of photographic “purity” at all.
Why would he demand that his work be anything more real than Spiderman? Or the beasts in Harry Potter?
An actor hanging on wires against a green screen, a CGI troll that took his breath away - these were his cultural touchstones..
And there were no illusions.
He knew it wasn’t real. It didn’t have to be.
In fact, he didn’t at all expect it to be.
From lightsabers to Neo, Ironman to Jumanji, fake became real enough to believe even for a few moments.
If you suspend the need to have it BE real, then it IS real.
And there was no reason to even expect it to be real if we all knew it wasn’t.
Photographers love photography. The process, the authenticity of it. Even the gear. We just love it.
We thought everyone else loved photography.
We were wrong. 100% and totally wrong.
He has no love of the photographic process; he has a total love of the outcome and doesn’t give two sh*ts about how it was made.
When he was a kid, he didn’t smirk at Neo’s abilities and think “Nobody could really do that”; he just loved watching the action and happily suspended the need to love the process.
AI is his goldmine.
It makes cool stuff.
it doesn’t have to be real or the result of a process of any kind.
Cool stuff that he used to watch on the screen, or in his video game, or read in comic books with almost photographic realism is now at his fingertips with a tap of the “enter” key
He can make that cool stuff himself.
And no one is going to take it away from him by explaining that the process has to be respected because… because… reasons!
And that is how it should be. The only constant is change.
And I am sure some of you will want to chime in with “Well, duh, dude.” I will remind you that we all come to our own clarity via our own route. My route has to be my own for me to embrace it.
And some may want to find a fallacy in my thinking, but I am standing by it and now it is beginning to make even more sense.
I see it all around.
I will continue to be in love with photography and will not make “art” on AI. My aesthetic is still mine, and I will stick with it.
But I will stop being concerned about those who have a different aesthetic. IDC is my new mantra.
They’ll do their own thing, and I will do mine.
Yesterday, I wrote about not being forced into a niche. And last week, I discussed why photographers need to have more than one skill.
Today, those articles seem to have even more importance
And to that young man who so nonchalantly prompted an image for his website:
Rock on, young man, rock on!
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Right on target. I also see this tendency of young people not caring for what it is real. It seems everything should be just like magic, no effort at all.
Good observations. AI is so outside of my process as a photographer, as well, that I feel that it doesn't concern me. But I guess I haven't given much thought to the fact that the folks who buy prints of my work are purchasing it mostly because it represents a place they know and love. AI isn't able to replicate landscapes well enough to match real locations, but I'm sure that's coming. The old trope of someone purchasing art because of the artist's individual story is going to take on intense scrutiny in this new age.