AI and photography
AI and photography feels like an uneasy marriage. As a photographer you want to record the world as it is. Light, shadow, a chance glance. But AI could not care less. It fills in the gaps in your image, puts a blue sky where a grey one was, or turns a busy street into an empty square. Magical? Certainly. But also slightly unnerving.
Generative fill
Take Photoshop’s generative fill. Select an object, press a button and poof, gone. What is left is a neatly filled background, as though it had always looked like that. Handy when there is a bin in the frame. But what if you wipe out a whole person? Or change a scene so that it is ‘nicer’ than reality? When are you still a photographer and when do you become a digital image maker?
The problem is not the technique but how we handle it. AI is a tool. Like a tripod or a flash. You can use it to make an image stronger, or to manipulate a story. It depends on where you draw the line. For street photography that usually means: what you photograph stays as it is. Small adjustments such as contrast and brightness, fine. But a complete rebuild of an image? Then you are doing something else.
AI can help too
Even so, AI can help. Think of noise reduction. Or sharpening. Tools that give your photos that bit extra without changing reality. And to be fair, sometimes generative fill is genuinely useful. Who has never wanted to take a distracting element out of a frame? But the question remains: how far do you go?
Photography is about making choices. What do you show? What do you leave out? AI makes those choices easier, but also more complex. Because the more we can manipulate, the more critically we have to keep looking. And that, in the end, is what separates a good photographer from someone who just plays about with software in post. Or so I think.
Looking and recording
Want to take your photography further without becoming dependent on AI? Come along to one of my street photography workshops. Because the best photos still come about on the street, or in interaction with people, and not behind a screen.
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