With the rapidly evolving capabilities of AI software, I continue to see every day articles, blog posts, and social media comments lamenting the end of photography as we know it. According to the doomsayers, we will never be able to look at a photograph without questioning its accuracy, its authenticity, its truthfulness to reality.
I’ve said it before, but I will say it again. A photograph never captures a scene exactly as we saw it with our eyes. It may be close, but it isn’t exact. It never has been; it never will be. Our choice of shutter speed, aperture, focal length, camera position, and so many other factors all affect how the scene is rendered in the final image. Even the decision to photograph a scene in black and white is a distortion of reality for most people.
Certainly, certain genres of photography (photojournalism comes to mind) should represent reality as accurately as possible. However, that is not, nor should it ever be, an expectation for photographs that are created purely for artistic reasons. Like choosing camera settings and using Photoshop, AI is simply another tool to be used for creating the image the photographer/artist has in mind.
And, from what I have seen so far, AI doesn’t really do anything that can’t be done in Photoshop except that it can probably be done more easily with AI. Photographers have been replacing skies and compositing images since the introduction of Photoshop. What AI seems to be doing is taking a very manual process that can be very time and labor intensive and making it less so by automating much of it. I see nothing wrong with that.
Visiting Pinnacle Mountain State Park several years ago, I spotted this old tree standing tall and extending above the overlook. I was struck by the starkness of the bare trunk and limbs and by the sense of defiance demonstrated by this tree, this old dead tree, that just simply refused to fall.
The sky was overcast, and I knew that photographing the tree against the sky would let me capture the austerity of the tree and to convey the sense of rebelliousness it displayed. I also knew that the overcast sky would photograph as a very light, uniform, textureless background that would not have the dramatic look I wanted. But, I also knew I could use that uniformity to replace the background with a more dramatic sky, and that was exactly what I did.
I opened the image in Photoshop and made a selection of the entire sky. I then chose an image out of my collection of sky photographs and pasted the new sky into the selection. I made a few more adjustments to enhance the contrast and brighten the shadow areas of the tree. Finally, I converted the image to black and white using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro to create what I feel is a more dramatic and compelling image.
I created this image before AI was even a gleam in someone’s eye. I was not trying to record the tree’s existence simply for posterity. I was trying to create an artistic image. To do so, I used every tool available to me at the time to achieve that goal. AI will simply be another tool in that toolbox, and one I expect I will take advantage of sooner rather than later.