#AI won't replace contract professionals. Contract professionals who use AI will replace those who don't | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

scarubaru · 15 days

Text

I don't think AI will have an outsize impact on photography in the mid to long term. Short term you have things like Generative Fill in Adobe, or Denoise AI, to bring up a less dramatic example, and this technology being rolled out quickly and in near ubiquity has caused some growing pains and worry. This says nothing of Dall E and its ability of generate images from scratch, though those results are, ah, less than perfect in many instances. The specter that's looming over photography currently is 'is this technology going to replace me, is it going to devalue my work?'

Fair questions. Still , I don't see AI replacing photographers. The way I see it, things like generative AI will become another tool in the kit, though one which will continue to be derided even as it becomes more normalized.

To start, you have genres like photojournalism and sports where unless you want to make a lot of people on all sides very angry at you, you can't really get away with producing AI images and calling it a day. There's the growing concern of AI being used to generate fake images/videos and passing them off as real events, but that's another topic. Assume you want to capture an event as best you can, and convey as much of what really transpired as possible.

For event and portrait work, my reasoning is that unless something truly unforeseen happens, you will not see the replacement of these photographers by AI. The couple splashing 30k on their wedding is not going to skimp out on hiring a photographer, and forego their set of curated golden hour photos on the beach. Kayleigh's dotting, well-heeled parents are absolutely going to drop 5k for a private portrait session. Event photography is and will continue to be a lucrative part of the market, for those who can break in.

Will AI make it more difficult to break? I don't think so. I think the people in the above example, beyond wanting high quality photos, also want a sense of what I'd call authenticity. 'Yes, my partner and I were there, on that beach, on this date. I still remember the smell of the salt air, the way the surf broke on the rocks,' etc etc. You'll have a subset of people who won't care, and they either won't hire a professional and will just have friends or family take their photos, or they might even feed a few poses of themselves into a generative AI and see what it gives them. But I don't think the subset of people who want a professional at their wedding/graduation/debut concert will shrink, and I don't see AI either easing or worsening the barriers for entry.

What about wildlife, travel, street? For the first two, I would still lean towards the desire for a sense of authenticity. I can see the market for these two genres contracting , as it already had prior to AI, but I also think you will still have people willing to pay for shots of a particular place, at a particular time, taken with a particular eye. Street is getting into artistic photography, and frankly it has never been easy to make a living off that, any more than you can readily make a living off being a painter or sculptor.

Maybe this is too naive or optimistic an assessment, and maybe that unforeseen thing will happen and photographers will go the way of the portrait painter, consigned to producing bizarre renditions of dying monarchs. But based on the current state of the technology and the field, I don't see that happening.

#photography #art #ramble #AI

0 notes