Do Real Photographers Use AI?

Cheers Andy ❤

hahaha, I love it, and honestly just got done removing power lines and a telephone pole from an image. But, it's ok... they weren't part of the natural landscape 🤣

Your comments make me think that most photographers really would prefer to be painters but we don't have the skill. After all, what painter would draw that discarded plastic bottle into their beach scene?

Thought provoking as always Andy. I must admit the masking techniques' now in Lightroom & Camera raw, do stop all of ball aching stuff, they dont always get it quite right, but certainly nearer than I would have done joining the dots. I makes the processing of imaging much simpler and less time consuming. Deskills the old masters of photoshop for certain

IMHO Journalists and documentary makers HAVE to depict what they SEE and not what they THINK they see or what they "LIKE" to see...
Photographers, on the other hand, are artists and they can use THEIR PHOTOS as base to represent what their heart and mind "saw" as all the painters do...

"What are you trying to say with your photography" is a key question. Great presentation Andy.

Another bang on video, Andy. Your brevity and honesty is refreshing in a bollocks filled world.

Well said! One of the nice things about turning 70 is I can say things like… I really don't care. Photography for me is both a joy and the therapy. If I enjoy the process of whatever retouching I feel is needed, that makes it OK. I must admit I tend to be old-school and use it only when necessary, but when I do there's no guilt involved. I'm sure when the first camera was invented fine artists were up in arms that people would use a machine to replace painting with oil or charcoal sketches. There's nothing natural about contemporary cameras. They are literally mobile computers. So from the get-go what we are doing is a deus ex machina situation. Who cares?! Especially for hobbyist like me. I appreciate the magic AI can bring to my images. And even if I didn't, using software to alter levels or straighten things or clean up dust spots is just as artificial process as there is. But like I say as a retired guy I'm just here to have fun. :-)

Dead on once again …and your correct on landscape photography….so many over saturated over processed pics out there it gets rather old. But as an old guy who shot film and slides for years my thoughts are going to be a bit different in the use of AI. Enjoy your comments Andy.

I think you will have to define what a "real photographer" is first. I remember when "real photographers" didn't use Photoshop and then later when "real photographers" didn't shoot digital.

I draw the line at 3.

I know you were having a dig at me from my comments in your last video and that is fine :) The point I was getting at was not if it is good or bad to use AI tools, but if they should be marked as AI manipulated when you have used these tools. I believe they should be marked. Quite a different discussion.

No photo replicates what the eye sees. Fast SS to freeze a bird in flight, shallow depth of field in a portrait, silky smooth water from a longer exposure. None of these are what the eye sees. Cameras see the world differently so we have to get over this SOC is the only truth. For journalism and documentary photography SOC is the best they can do.
The images I create are for me so I don't impose limits although there are some techniques I generally do not do. Are they some sort of line I will not cross, perhaps. I do not do sky replacements, nor do I add elements to an image, however I am happy to remove distractions, especially power lines. Having said all that I have on occasion tried a composite image just to satisfy an artistic mood. The main point though is to be up front with an image and how it is presented. If quizzed then one needs to be truthful. If its fine art then as you say anything goes, however if its a depiction of a local attraction then processing should reflect a realistic rendition.
I don't use generative fill however I do use the other tools to remove distractions. As AI is Artificial Intelligence then I would suggest the clone stamp tool is not AI. The photographer is deciding which pixels to replace other pixels with.
As I am not on Facebook nor Instagram I am not exposed to this new age of photography. Just trucking along in my own bubble.
In any case, thanks for bringing to light current practises for us to consider.

I am a hobbyist landscape photographer. I remove anything manmade if I feel it detracts from the natural scene. This generally means trash, road signs, power lines, distant buildings, and people. On the other hand, I would not remove an entire road, such as one that winds throughout the landscape. That is just an arbitrary decision. And I will never do a sky replacement. In general, my photograph should represent what I saw while standing there, manmade objects excluded.

You are not a very confident photographer if you need to fix up your images, in order to obtain "likes" from random viewers.

The AI sh*tshow will lead real photographers back to real analogue photography. Just shoot film. Problem solved. 🎞️ 🥸

Some good points there, Andy. Like the ‘temporary’ definition. Sounds like a good guide.

Yes we do.

At the end of the day, it all depends on what you were using AI for in the first place when it comes to photography and whether you were doing it for personal or professional reasons. If you were using AI for simple photo correction with removing objects that distract from your photo like power lines and such, well then that would be acceptable. But if you were using AI to straight up add things that weren't there to begin with that are CLEARLY fake and using Generative AI, well then that would be a BIG no no. And ESPECIALLY if you were using AI to replace old school knowledge of photography and learning the fundamentals in the first place. And it's these people that choose to do the latter, that are fueling whole argument with AI and therefore think it's acceptable.

Yea. You should be marked if you use any level of ai so its transparent who you are as a an editor and creative and it should scare you. It's talentless. Its not creative. And its lame. I like knowing that the end result is from the creativity. ESPECIALLY now where everyone is so fake. I really dont trust any photographers anymore. You all echo chambering each other, "its fine." Just Capture in cam. Dont change the sky. Live in reality and capture reality. You all deserve to have your work scraped by the tech you now depend on. Real photographers capture in camera and edit very little. If you use adobe in any capacity in this day and age you are no longer a creative. Cheers bud. Maybe one day youll find youre way back to humanity and capturing real moments or maybe you were never a great photographer. Glad I unsubbed when you became this way.

I have made the point that the camera is self has a lot of AI in it. That's not to say we should just be cutting our images to bits but the actual camera itself has many AI features especially modern Mirrorless cameras auto detect auto subject detection. They are AI. I could name another couple of processes turning a coloured image into black-and-white that is AI.... I'm not saying you should hack your images to bits with the clone tools, but all I'm saying is AI does exist in the camera itself. And I do believe there are some positive uses for AI images. I remember doing a wedding once and a young person was getting married but their mother sadly was in an old peoples home with dementia. I was able to take a photograph of her and place her in just one photo in the wedding scene it meant the world to the person this was a positive use of AI and no one had a problem with it because that person had a large emotional attachment in that person's life. Sometimes I have removed broken teeth from photos because the people felt so conscious they didn't want to smile. There are positive uses of AI. It's not bad and I do think you need to be mindful of what you're doing but I don't throw the good bits of it out, not at all but that's just me and I am a professional photographer but we are also Artist as well and Photography is art. Does that mean I hack all my images to bits with the AI tools? No it doesn't just in certain situations. It is okay.

think a more juicy debate is, what constitutes a "real photographer"! 😂😂

Here's my take... AI tools are just that... another set of tools. How you use them and how much is up to the individual. I chose to become a photographer because I loved how a medium captured the real world and preserved it in a 2 dimensional space. If you start to get away from how the real world looked at time of capture, I think it ceases to be photography, and more art and impressionism.
It gets complicated however, are sky replacements in real estate photography ok? or day to twilight conversions?
All interesting discussions. But we are an unregulated industry, in techniques, pay, employment, quantifications... don't think anything is going to change soon.
I wouldn't reccomend to anyone these days to do it as your primary source of income, unless you have a guaranteed client base or are employed by an organisation. Freelance photography in all genres is an oversaturated market, with a shrinking demand base

I am a hobby photographer. I consider the AI generative thing as a stupid (read boring) way of making images. It is just no fun. I just canceled my Adobe Photography plan subscription because of this.

Once again, a great discussion and I agree with your final assessment. As a sports photographer who photographs human beings and is often paid by those same humans to display a point in time in their lives or sports careers, any use of generative fill AI is more often than not to remove distractions from the background or correct camera issues, without it being obvious that I did so. I would be doing the same thing using the non-AI tools. AI just makes it easier.