What’s in it for you?

So a while back I wrote a post about some of the new and very easy to use features in Photoshop that can completely transform your pictures. Taking that a step further with Generative Fill and Firefly, Adobe’s AI-powered tools, some people will create images that don’t require going into the field at all. It’s not photography, but who will care if the resulting image is the one they want? Need a photo of a fancy wedding cake? A duck on a tree branch? A mushroom with a ladybug on it? A stack of fresh cookies next to a mug of cocoa? A bench next to a field of daisies with a horse in it? No problem. It’s going to be ridiculously easy to create photo-like illustrations. I wonder if graphic artists and other folks have the same worry and anxiety about AI taking over their craft and elevating the basically talentless to paid artists. I have sympathy for those who will have their incomes drastically reduced because art directors don’t care how an image was made nor how much learning or time went into it. The end result is the only thing that matters.

And that’s how it’s been for a long time. Oh sure, sometimes I’m impressed with how hard it was for a photographer to get an image, but most of the time I don’t really care. I’m too removed to fully understand, much less feel its importance or difficulty. So you rode a camel for days, fought in a Bedouin chieftain war, scaled a mountain, lost your map and then got an amazing photo of an eagle with a unicorn. Nice, but, how good is the shot? And if you didn’t want to do all that, it doesn’t matter. The end result can probably be generated out of random 1s and 0s and still will work for whatever publication wants it.

One of the hardest things is to make the customer care about your process. Your time, effort and training is going to need to have value worth paying for. Maybe not as much as the end product they are buying, but real-world experience is going to have to count for customers. That translates into authenticity that their customers, consumers, need to also value. Otherwise a few prompts that a 12-year-old developed are all that’s going to be required to make a photo of a sidewalk cafe in the mid-morning with 3 casually dressed people drinking cappuccinos and eating scones. Oh and they have to be wearing Green Bay Packers scarves. Totally possible. So if your customer doesn’t value your process (to be honest, most never have), what’s left?

You. Your joy in the craft. Your love (dare I say need?) for the experience of making photographs.

I don’t follow commercial photographers on social media, only nature photographers, but those are the ones who value getting up, getting out and getting the shot. Those are the folks who are seeking the experience of being in nature and seeing something cool. We are the ones who want to be out with animals, plants and weather to immerse ourselves in the environment and discover things we’ve never seen before. If you go to my About page, you’ll see my approach laid out in a sentence or two at the end, and that has never changed. I’m out there for me. For the nature I encounter and for the love of being there. The need to be there. Being in the woods or on the water lights up my brain like nothing else.

Oh sure, I bring it back. I show it to you and I’m glad that we can both enjoy those results, but even if I never wrote another blog post, I’d still be out there doing what I do. And not everything I produce ends up on this blog. Some photos just hide out in my SmugMug or Flickr sites. Some spend their lives in Lightroom. Even if a file doesn’t make the cut and is never processed, or worse, gets deleted, it has value. The value of my being on the spot to witness it.

So for many nature photographers not much has changed except at a deliverables level. Outlets that need quality pictures of nature will have to decide what their customers will tolerate and what they won’t. Do consumers of nature images want fake ones? Do viewers value the experience the photographer had while getting the photos? Do they want it to be real? Will they put up with AI generated bullshit that doesn’t speak to them because it isn’t authentic? Maybe some will, but those outlets have to figure that out quickly and then basically make a statement about the kind of visual content they will purchase and present.

For me I want to know that a photographer was out there and had, to paraphrase Ghostbuster Winston, the tools and the talent. Unstaged, unfaked and unAI photos still have the power to awe me. That’s what we have to tap into – that sense of awe that can be conveyed by a genuine photo of something a photographer stood in front of, witnessed and brought back. Is that really where awe lies? Where wonder dwells? In the face-to-face meeting of species? It is for me. Just the other day while kayaking I came across a couple of turtles so small they could fit in your hand and they just craned their necks to look at me while a third dove for cover. That two put up with me taking their pictures and telling them how cute they were (of course) was a privilege. It really was. And that’s what I’m out there for. To experience that. Those moments and my ability to capture them are what keeps me going, not the perfect turtle photo, although I’d take that, too.

All of these pictures were done when I was back in NH for a visit and had a few days to myself. I had a rental car and explored nature preserves near where I had to be for other commitments. It rained on and off most of the time, but I didn’t care. I stayed close to the car and let my curiosity and sense of beauty lead me into the trails. I was doing what I love and having a great time discovering and rediscovering the nature of my earlier life. My kit was minimal and so my mind was turned to what I saw and how best I could photograph it with what I had, not wrestling with gear. In a way it was freeing even if I had to keep watching the radar for rain and listening for thunder.

Consider this post my authenticity statement. My wonder and intense curiosity about the natural world will motivate me and keep me grounded in reality. Even if a photo is heavily edited, it’s done with an eye to aesthetics and artistic presentation, not to fool you into thinking something existed when it didn’t. What I see is what you get.