Every year, I've had to hear about how a new technology was going to kill the photography industry. I ignored it all, until now.
Smartphones are killing the camera market. In 2007, over 110 million digital cameras were sold, but in 2021, the world only bought 8.4 million. Phones are coming with multiple cameras that are capable of different focal lengths, macro, and long exposure photography, but of course, the real value is in the software. Photography software is becoming so good that it will soon be able to take any photo, of any quality, and make it great. Cell phones will always have a massive advantage over dedicated cameras because they are connected to the internet. They have direct access and the processing power to run the software that will change the industry in the future.
The scariest advancement in technology has happened in the last few weeks. Artificial intelligence art generators like MidJourney or Dall-E 2 have hit the market. These programs can instantly create world-class quality art for free by simply typing in a few keywords. You might think this will destroy the graphic design and illustration industry, but what does this have to do with photography? Well, new updates allow these programs to create photorealistic images.
All of the images below are not real people. They were not taken with a camera. These images were generated with a program, in seconds, for free.
Why would anyone go through the trouble of hiring a photographer, model, makeup artist, stylist, and location scout, when they can create something that looks better, instantly for free?
And I know what you're thinking, "photographers" will still be needed to take photos of real people, like a celebrity on the cover of a magazine or a headshot for a website. Oh, really? These programs allow you to upload images of faces and then create new art with those people in it.
This is obviously not perfect yet, but I would never have guessed that this would be possible today. What happens when any person is able to scan their face with their phone, and then have a "photography generator" create world-class photos of themselves in any location, with any clothing, with any lighting, in any style? I never dreamed we would be here so fast, but this is right around the corner.
You are going to have to pivot soon. You're going to have to embrace this new technology or, like all of my film shooting friends who refused to learn Photoshop, your work will eventually dry up as well.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and stay tuned on Fstoppers.com because I'm going to keep a close eye on this new technology over the next year. My goal is to figure out how to capitalize on it and share it with you.
It's not about single exposure, it's about certain honesty. For example, you can't even get close to modern film latitude with single exposure digital image. But you certainly can bracket your exposures, do some exposure blending in post and still remain honest - to whatever you want to do. I don't replace skies but I can understand while say architecture photographers use this tool - especially because the market itself forces them to do that, and perhaps there is different honesty to adhere to if you are commercial photographer.
The computing progress is terryfiing because it threatens the ways we are used to (as we are closing on the prophetic cyberpunk genre?); but perhaps part of the problem is we are "dinosaurs", used to the past and ill-prepared to embrace what the future brings. (Innovation is probably a natural human need, anyway.) I am afraid of the future, deep down I perhaps hope for the opportunity to join the followers of a Nedd Ludd; but that's my problem. :)
I think my biggest issue with all of it is beautiful places being innundated by Instagrammers destroying it because someone posted a fantastical version of a location. Hearing people lament the fact that it "doesn't look like it does on IG" drives me crazy. National and state parks are suffering because people are seeking this photoshopped fantasy that doesnt exist.
Good point about the latitude. I do bracket, but have never learned how to combine the images. Perhaps I am a little scared of falling into the fakery I speak of. All of that editing power is very tempting, but I need to balance keeping my images true to how I see them. I suppose the argument could be made that when I make a b+w it is not honest. Oh, where to draw the line...
B&W is certainly honest - it's tonal representation of a reality. Monochromatic drawings / graphics are hardly less profound because they lack colour. :) (E. g. Goya, Bruegel...)
Don't be afraid of exposure blending / luminosity masking. It doesn't necessary lead to the "fakery" (I suppose I perfectly understand what you mean). On the contrary, it's a powerful tool to make true to life images. Ad instagram - I agree wholeheartedly. (I prefer hiking / climbing / cycling to a location I discover myself.)
You sound like someone who enjoys taking photos but doesn’t sell photos. Commercial clients don’t want images that are real, they want images that sell products and they don’t care how it was made.
Yup, back in 2004 I was creating 3d models of products for commercial clients. takes some time on the computer but some other things are easier as the animation-software's camera can do things a real camera can not; like infinite dof at inches from the product.
Kinda along the same lines where not many people want a realistic landscape for their wall but go after the heavily techno-colored edited piece instead. Some of these photos are real and are extremely impressive, but most are dreamscapes. Nothing wrong with that of course.
The most famous romantic landscape painter (next to Turner) Caspar David Friedrich painted "dreamscapes" - landscapes made of combined pieces of real Alpine, Bohemian and German terrain. His most famous picture, the ur-instagram Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, is constructed of certain parts of Bohemian - Saxon Sandstone Hills and perhaps even parts of Riesengebirge. His Watzmann (or the Giant Mountains with Schneekoppe), while impressive, is not thaat realistic either. That's because Friedrich wanted to convey a certain mood rather than be descriptive.
Of course, every rennaisance scene was similarly constructed of almost absurd, grotesque alpine elements artists such as Da Vinci and Bruegel saw or thouth they saw while crossing Alps to Italy.
On the other hand, photography is by it's nature somehow descriptive, certainly much more than older imaging forms.
I actually do sell photos, but not product or marketing ones. Not to get too philosophical, but isn't the fact that selling a product being more important than honesty the bigger problem?
However, in product photography, they aren't generally trying to pass off the imagry as real. Real estate, on the other hand, should try to keep it fairly accurate. I'm going to notice if the property doesn't have the overly green lawn and the bedrooms are thimble sized when I visit.
Your beef is with marketing, not photography.
The likelihood of grass at the end of summer in California being anything but yellow is slim. However if the property is being listed in the fall, not the spring time, when in fact the grass would be green, it might make sense to green up the grass. Realtors and home owners are interested in marketing a property in it's best light, and thus, a grass replacement might be necessary.
There's nothing dishonest about marketing green grass unless there is no grass at all to begin with, and measures have been put in place to identify if a realtor is advertising inaccuracies in their marketing.
Photographer should not sober over this. What photographer can do is embrace the advancement of this technology and adapt. As photographers are intrinsically artists, they can produce better images, composite or not, out of these AI image generators. Besides, I see not all photography genre would be affected.
The causal connection between being artist and producing better work may prove to be wishful thinking - it probably depends on the definition of what better means. Human artists may probably produce more original work then a computer (by virtue of not being a computer - therefore being probably more unpredictable), but that may not mean better in commercial - or even general taste terms.
Art is based on a structure, built based on a structure - perhaps the structure is subconscious, perhaps closer to what E. A. Poe ironicaly described in his groundbreaking essay The Philosophy of Composition (where he debunks the romantic myth of divine inspiration of his contemporary influencers...). If human-produced art generaly points to a common average, artificial artist may be as good or better than the vast majority of human artists.
Photography absolutely destroyed painting and digital art destroyed drawing. It doesn’t mean it ceases to exist, but the number of opportunities in those fields plummeted.
What? There are still portrait painters making good livings. That's not "absolute" destruction.
And the number of opportunities in portrait painting has not even "plummeted."
This may be a situation as with horses. Despite the dominance of the automobile for common transportation, there are actually more horse owners today than there have ever been in the US.
Most of those who purchase photographic portraits today would not have been in the market for painted portraits anyway, and the number of people who do patronize painters has actually increased over 100 years ago.
I wrote about that last week! So crazy right? https://fstoppers.com/news/will-image-generating-software-dall-e-2-take-...
Oh man some how I totally missed this post!
You're a busy man! I think your title was better than mine boss!
A dagger to the heart. You could have at least put a question mark at the end of your headline!
It’s a fascinating technology and I have generated some interesting images based on “Dune” as a means of trying it out, but you don’t have the fine grained control over the image that would elevate it to the level of art (admittedly basing that on a personal definition of the word). You can get close but you don’t have the ability to reposition an arm or alter the hair with any degree of accuracy. It’s essentially rolling the dice with each generation.
But as a tool to create elements, it’s got its uses. I’ve attached an image that is a composite of several generated elements.
The whole "art" comment is ridiculous on its face. It's art if the artist says its art. The degree of control you are referring to will be available in a year or two. You have no idea what is coming.
I have a hard time believing this is all doom and gloom. Imagine how all the portrait painters felt with the invention of photography. Imagine how all the stage actors felt with the invention of film. Imagine how all the screen actors felt with the invention of animation. Imagine how [enter your favorite technology here] This is just another step on the road to wherever we're going.
Just started seeing this art last week and I'm blown away by the surreal landscapes.
Its a wonderful tool for an artist. I'm excited to start playing with it and 3D rendering.
As it stands currently, The Copyright Office Rules that A.I. Art can't be copyrighted: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-copyright-office-rules-ai-a...
So unless that changes (which it could) I don't currently see any real commercial value in A.I. Art at this time. Though a lot of brands utilize stock images that everyone including their competitors have access to, I'd argue that most brands want imagery that is unique to their brand. If A.I. Art can't be copyrighted and there is no copyright protection whatsoever, then anyone can steal it and use it as they please which would instantly devalue its worth.
In other words, if you're currently creating A.I. Art and putting it on your website & social media as your own art. Know that anyone can take it from your site, print it, sell it and otherwise use it as they please because it is not protected by copyright law. Even if it were protected under copyright law, who owns it? You? The AI (which currently has no rights)? The software developer?
I find all of this stuff is pretty interesting and I don't completely know what to make of it yet. My hope is that there will always be a place for real photography, real music and real art. Depending on all of this plays out, I think it's a real possibility that A.I. will at the very least make it much harder to make a living as an artist, as if it isn't already hard enough. I think the photographers that are least at risk here are probably photographers who are shooting weddings. I'd be very surprised if brides start asking people to use A.I. to generate their wedding images. Only time will tell.
I also feel like eventually every image used commercially will require some kind of disclaimer as to how it was created or whether or not is real.
I can see the arguments being made here about professional photography, but I am not a pro and the art of photography is a hobby which I thoroughly enjoy the act of. It gets me out of my house, amongst the elements and allows me to inject meaning into the drudgery of everyday life. For me, it's about the process, not the product, although it's a bonus when I've produced something meaningful through that process.
And further to that, I am not interested in technical perfection such as what AI is essentially aiming for, but rather something more akin to the philosophy surrounding lomography - surreal, low fi, less than perfect and more artistic in nature - something that takes a keen and watchful eye and makes use of interesting angles/colors and represents a more subjective point of view and/or transient moments in time which might have otherwise been lost forever. Generally, things that defy descriptions which would be necessary to feed into an image generator. That being said, I am awed by the advancements of machine learning, it simply does almost nothing to inspire me as an artist.
As someone said "Close but no cigar". The AI images, although interesting are not there yet in terms of reality. Most if not all portrait images are highly filtered, many with beards, face paint, huge glasses, etc. It's all to distract and direct your eyes/brain from seeing the detail of the faces.
Your comment is completely inaccurate. You have no idea what has been going on in the field over the last few weeks.
I think a lot of people are missing the overall point of this article - of course photography as a medium isn't going anywhere, but the opportunities to turn pro are going vastly diminish in the next few years. Anyone that works for an ecommerce company taking pictures can get replaced by a cellphone in the next decade. The company I work for has already started to make the shift - the CEOs are getting more and more confident in having us just use the images they took on their cellphones for any midlevel item we sell, and there's been no drop off in sales. Why keep pay for a photographer when the cellphone images are getting the same turn over rate?
Sure, live events may need to have someone there in person to document the event, but as mirrorless cameras and cellphones continue to advance the skills gap is shrinking faster than ever. Cousin Bob will be able to get close to the same results as a pro in the next few years. We've been lucky to see a lot of growth in our industry, but that does not mean it's at all sustainable. The cost of entry is continuing to shrink, and with the help of technology the level of knowledge needed to get professional feeling results is getting lower and lower.
Lee's been at this a long time, I've been reading this site for well over a decade. He and Patrick really helped me learn the ropes as I got started working professionally. This is a well intentioned warning for aspiring professional photographers looking to make a real career with photography. Anyone still in the middle of their career should do their best diversify and learn some new skills. Videos still a great way to make a career using your photography knowledge. More and more companies are using short form videos as a means of advertising in the TikTok era. Just take this as an opportunity to continue to grow as an artist - there's still plenty of ways to make it as a professional creative.
Want to get creeped out? Checkout "storyfile" companies are utilizing the tech so family members can talk with their dead loved ones again.
There is no pivoting. Art directors don't need photographers, to use an AI image generator because they can do it themselves. Assuming there will still be magazines in the very near future, an AI program will design an ad, create the art or photography, and write the copy. The whole process will take less than an hour and will be incredibly inexpensive.
I've already been phased out of some of my regular retouching gigs since AI's been able to replicate my work at a fraction of the cost & time. The whole industry is already going through a massive shift to AI, and it's only going to be magnified as the next few years play out and there's more and more improvements to what's already available.
I have a client that has embraced CGI this year. At the same time I added 25-30% to my income from that specific client this year with traditional photography. I shoot a lot of furniture and people think that Ikea has revolutionized that industry for switching almost 100% to CGI. Not at all. Economics are the name of the game. Automation is not always the best solution for many reasons.
It's simply a matter of economy of scale at the moment - Ikea has a large catalog of products. They found it cheaper to get all of their product photography done with CGI, saving them money on traditionally photography and retouching. As the cost of this continues to drop as more large companies embrace the workflow, the cost of entry will be even be affordable as more and more AI solutions pop up specialized in product CGI. The door will soon be open to smaller companies with less inventory, it's only a matter of time with the improvements in 3D rendering. There will still be a need for traditional photography from time to time - but the decrease in demand will make it harder for new people to get into the industry, and it will take out a lot of the middle to low end pros that specialized in this genre.
What I am trying to explain is that hyperrealistic CGI may not be the best route for some industries or companies. There are lower level quality renderings in CGI that can be used in much more effective ways when it comes to sales which it the ultimate goal I would think. So photographic replacement with AI may not be a necessity for all. Many industries are probably not obsessing over AI and CGI like photographers think and do. Ikea has been into CGI for 8 years now. Their model is very unique but the industry they compete with hasn’t really rushed to embraced CGI at high level and possibly won’t ever. After all, the best use of CGI and AI is the one method that brings the biggest returns, not necessarily the saving generated in one single department.
I think AI could have the greatest impact on some commercial photography, but I feel like headshot, wedding, family portrait, small business and all types of journalism are safe for a long time. Cell phones are more of a danger to those industries than AI.
Enter Adobe, Sony, Canon, etc. who should (probably will) buy the company and the patents, then will lock up the technology from public use, rendering it useless, as so many companies do across various industries.
I think this will only increase the desire for authentic pictures and photography.
I don't see a whole lot of conceptual difference between images of 'not real people' that never existed discussed here from some of the heavily photoshopped images posted here on fstoppers (which are basically heavily scenes and even people that are nothing like the original photo.)
In a world where hundreds of millions of people ate taking photographs, it's hard to claim photography is dead. It's been democratized and expanded, much the same way that Eastman's Kodak changed everything over 100 years ago. I suspect some of the travelling photography business was upset that people could take pictures without a wagon full of chemicals and extensive training.
There seems to be almost a guild mindset at work. (side point: while doing some research I came upon an old thread on an old thread discussing the London bombing years ago. Some of the responses expressed shock the newspapers would print news photos taken by phone, rather than by members of the news/photo union. OH! the humanity)
This is only for certain types of photography as mentioned earlier. I am a professional sports photographer and a mobile phone and AI software will not replace my Z9 and a 180-400mm lens. We all heard the argument that hi-res video was going to put us out of business because you can just grab a still frame from these cameras. Well, one reason that didn't happen is because rightsholders that pay millions of dollars will not allow news agencies, magazines, etc to shoot video at sporting events. There will always be a need for professional still cameras when covering sports. Another example is the money being spent by Sony, Nikon, and Canon on mirrorless cameras and lenses. And the comment that phones are connected to the internet doesn't mean anything because my camera can be connected to my phone or laptop wirelessly and I can upload images immediately after a play has happened.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/03/tech/ai-art-fair-winner-controversy/index...
Sure some photos will use AI but I think you give it a few years and the novelty will wear off. What is the purpose of photography? It is to capture a moment. How do you capture a moment through ai? Now improving a picture through ai is something that will happen but you still need a person in there taking a shot whether that is with a DSLR or a phone camera.
A camera phone reeks amateur. I hate them.. I'll just keep my Leica. Have a nice day.
After shooting weddings for 25 years and having started my photography adventure in 1988, I'm literally down to my last six weddings ever. Brides are awful, parents are worse and 900+ weddings and 1,000+ family sessions isn't a bad career. Just before Covid, I had started a social media company that has slowly replaced my photography revenue stream. Earlier this year, I landed quite a large client and that was it, I decided I was done with weddings. As a professional photographer, drone pilot and social media freak, it just made sense. To be honest, if all you do is photography, your days are numbered. Don't wait until it's too late, be sure to make moves now! In 2018, I realized things were drastically changing and I had to start figuring out a plan B for my future. If you haven't figured out your plan B, you should now. Good luck everyone!
This is a perfect example of "Gee mom look no hands" Technology being more harmful than good. Next we on the list is driverless cars. There goes the Cab industry Uber and Lyft hiring thousands of people trying to make an honest living. How far are we going to go with this stuff until we realize it is not sustainable...
Look at all these depressions and other medical issues coming in colossal numbers in the near future. Some AI medical robots will fix us up... probably... not.
I just saw a funny cartoon where two doctors talk about AI getting too smart to even want to do or jobs. There is hope! Well may be, may be not