Happy Tuesday and thanks always for staying with me for a few minutes reading my posts, I appreciate it!
Now, since the Christmas break and for the following weeks, I’ve had a little time to play with AI and generate random images.
I installed ComfyUI for stable diffusion and I found it’s really powerful, even if I’m using it at its very basics.
However, I’m not going to dig into the technical or start any further discussion about how good or bad it is.
I use it because I like it and I have fun creating stuff I couldn’t create in real life, at least at that precise moment.
And the more I get used to how it works, the more I see results improve and images become more and more realistic.
But…
I can’t feel the spark when I look at those images.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a problem with the artwork itself.
The problem is I can’t feel emotions because I didn’t TALK to the girl in the image. I didn’t FEEL her emotions when we were shooting.
I realised this, it seems like a paradox, exactly when the images became nearly perfect.
For every image I produce, I always go through some post-production to enhance and improve it the best I can. So that the final product looks exactly the way I want it.
AI images shouldn’t make any difference. However, I’m just blocked and can’t make any edits on them. Not because they don’t need it, but because I don’t feel those images as completely MINE.
Does it make sense?
The experience I’ve grown as a photographer is made of connection, empathy, emotions. In portraits, you have to be on the same wavelength as your model to do a good job. You have to talk, to feel the creative vibe flowing in the room (or in the air when shooting outdoors).
There needs to be complicity.
That complicity translates into the feeling the viewers will perceive when looking at the photograph.
The problem I have with AI is I can’t experience the same emotions when creating with it as I normally do with my camera. I can be happy with the results and the things I learn about it. And I can be happy with the images I can ask it to produce. But I feel there’s no life in it.
It’s, for me, an emotionless process aimed only at creating a beautiful image that works as just itself. And it takes out a lot of the human part of photography.
Again, I’m not fighting AI. I think it’s a tremendous tool. And the possibilities it opens are amazing. I’m just saying that, from my personal point of view, it’s not photography. It looks like photography. A lot.
It’s just a different type of art.
What do you think? Does this resonate with you in any way?
Let me know!
Take care and talk soon!