In my 20 years of making photographs, I’ve realized something: people have always loved images with soft shadows and soft light. There have surely been instances and times where people loved hard shadows, hard light and direct flash. And now in the age of AI, AI is creating images that hold photography to the place once reserved for paintings. More specifically, it’s holding good photography to that standard.
The lead image in this article isn’t AI. I shot and edited that image for our Sony a99 II review. Then I edited the image in Capture One. It had soft lighting and I purposely set the scene up to do that by adjusting the exposures in-camera and also probably with some post-production. In contrast, the photograph that’s part of an ad on the left is likely to be AI. Something about the shoulders, the arms, the hands, and even the lighting just seems really off. I don’t believe that everyone always goes out to find soft lighting and to make pictures that way.
AI is working to emulate a look that humanity has valued and loved for many years: the light, airy, shadowless look where everyone appears to be flattering. It’s rarely creating ugly imagery or something that really makes you feel something other than the fact that something may be off.
I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that some of the images above were made with AI. But they weren’t. I made them all in-camera and at times there was some post-production. What my images are lacking though is the manicure and fauxtoshop where things look too smooth.
I could go on and on about this. But if I did, then I’m sure that I’d feed some tech bro who would try to break humanity and mimic the processes that working photographers do. And why would I do that?
Another thing to consider is that rarely does AI make imagery that appears to emulate a film look. Can it do so? Sure. But the people who are selecting those images aren’t looking for that look. They’re instead aspiring to something that’s otherwise highly unobtainable unless they’re paying lots of money.
Does this all seem odd? Yes. And I believe that everyone should question commercial images that they see and others. Just the other day, I was looking at a food menu and saw lots of AI imagery that looked nothing like what the restaurant would actually make. None of it seemed believable and so I couldn’t in good faith go and buy anything from that restaurant.
AI has some good uses. I can say this very firmly as a high functioning blind man. But it shouldn’t replace humanity; though that’s how people are using it. People essentially need to learn ethics — if they don’t want themselves to be replaced, then they shouldn’t use tools that replace others unless they’ve specifically learned those trades that the person being replaced could do.
Process those words for a while. At the same time, know that this entire article was written by a human.
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