Since photography began the debate with many viewers of the medium has been.. “is that real”?
There are lots and lots of examples of photo manipulation or “photoshop” throughout history.
The legendary artist Man Ray made the Violin d”ingres shown below.
As are some not so famous but equally entertaining manipulations are shown here.
And yes, they were done faaaar before the creation of computers. These were done by layering separate film images onto each other and creating a new image.
The advent of Photoshop in the early 90’s changed the game. Digital is far easier to manipulate than actual pieces of film.
Digital retouching in so common in our society today that even our photos selfie modes do a scary good job of it.
For a very long time now, photographers who had good retouching skills or teams could make an everyday image look just a little more special. Or, completely fantastical! Just look at any commercial photoshoot. Like the ones I made for Mobifone with Take a few years ago.
Obviously there is a lot of manipulation going on. But they are still. at the core, photographs.
This brings us nicely into todays topic.. AI, I know it is a topic that seems to get discussed nonstop lately. But really, can you blame anyone? It turns non artists in to creators of incredible talent. It turns writers into visual artists, and visual artists into (sort of ) decent writers. It is incredible stuff.
However, there was a comment on one of my recent Linkedin posts about my previous musings write up on my friends car that I helped photograph.
The commenter in a message to me asked.. Did a real person build this car…. or is this an AI image?
For some reason, I was both flattered and a little annoyed by the idea that my creative image, and my friends skills could so easily be assumed to be computer generated. Then I had a longer think about it and I realized how quickly AI generated images have become the norm. So quickly that they are now flooding image searches more than actual images and people are now automatically assuming that anything that looks even a little unrealistic simply cannot be made by human hands.
A good example of the flood of AI imagery is the below screenshot taken by one of my partners at the Cake Collective during an internal discussion. He was trying to find some stock images for a proposal. Have a look at the photo below. Ask yourself, how many actual photographs do you see in that grid?
Which brings me to the photos in question from my original post.
Well to be honest, two samples. One from myself and one from the fine folks at Cake again.
Lets look at the first photo comparison. A bottle shot made by Kevin Lee next to an AI rendered image. I use this as a comparison because someone asked Kevin if his shot was AI generated.
To many it might seem obvious, especially when the shots are side by side. But if you look closer, there are small things that make the photographers image clearly a photographers work. The placement of highlights, the composition. the focus on the detail. Lastly. the actual real life feel and texture to the shot.
Not to say that the AI image is a slouch. it is pretty good for something that took all of 45 seconds to generate. But it lacks a certain.. Soul.
On to comparison number 2. This one I posted recently on my own musings. It is a shot of my friends incredible car he built by hand (hop over to TikTok and give him a follow if you haven’t already).
Lets ignore the different skies for a moment and focus on the vehicles themselves. Aside from the different paint styles. Glossy and matte. The colours are very similar, the lighting style is similar, even the stadium in the background comes out looking fairly realistic.
Which is why I guess I should not surprised when people ask if a photo I make is AI or not.
Personally I think the difference is fairly obvious as to which shot is AI. But I suppose with the onslaught of AI images flooding our social media feeds it is bound to happen at some point.
There was in the past, much debate about how much photoshop is too much photoshop. But for that argument, I would like to point out that people have, as I mentioned above, been retouching an manipulating photos for a veeeeeery long time.
An excellent case in point. The below Photograph of James Dean made in times square. The photo on the right is the finished, published, and now almost iconic image.
The photo on the left… is what came straight out of the camera.. in 1955!!
So whats the point of all this discussion?
I think for many photographers the influx of AI content is a little scary. We have worked hard over the length of our careers to learn how to create images that invoke a feeling. Images that can be realistic, or fantastical in nature. Images that tell a story. AI is scary. It removes all that hard work and seems to relegate us into a less important level of creativity.
Photography has long been the underappreciated little brother of the art world. A painter paints and a person sees that painting and says to themselves “wow, I could never do that!”
The artist draws and the viewer says “wow, thats amazing, it must have taken so much time to learn how to do that!”
The photographer snaps a photo and most people say “so your job is just pushing a button right? I can do that.”
And that sentiment is what keeps photography as an art form a little on the bottom of the pile.
Now with the advent of AI, anyone can become an artist, Which is pretty incredible and has led to some fascinating creations. But it also pushes photography down the pile again. When AI images become photo realistic, where is the artistic integrity?
In the end, I feel there will be a crossing paths or an amalgamation of the two mediums. But personally I hope that they stay separate. AI art can have its place.. and photography its own as well.
If you are curious to see some more examples of early photo manipulations you should check out this website – Fix The Photo for a nice little article on the subject.
Likewise with this article on Rare historical photos.
As for some fascinating AI generated art, The Fractalnaut on instagram has an excellent science fiction series about a universe of sentient plant life that uses AI images to tell stories that they write.
I hope you found this little musing entertaining and thought provoking.