Permit me another aside. But this does connect with a larger conversation about creativity. If you can endure.
There will always be those who strive to do more. And there will be those who are fine with the status quo. There is no better place to view this theory than standing in line at a hotel Starbucks during a girls volleyball tournament. I arrive in line at 6AM. There are eight people in line before me. Twenty six minute later there are six people in line before me. The beleaguered staff makes an announcement. “It will be a twenty minute wait for drinks.” Nearly one hour total before I can see my Americano.
Parents wait in line for their children who sit at tables doom scrolling, headphones on. When their turn is called, strangers must alert the children to their frantic, hand-waving parents holding up the line, unable to get their child’s attention because the headphones and constant flicking between Instagram and Tik Tok. (Kids are sitting down so I can see their screens.) There is no acknowledgement of the stranger’s assistance, only a display of annoyance that their continual partial attention has been impacted. Flick, flick, flick, heart, heart, heart, swipe to next app. Flick,flick, flick, heart, heart, heart, swipe back to original app. (TT and IG dominate)
Parents meanwhile, in a classic show of detachment and selfishness, themselves doom scrolling IG until the cashier jars them out of their stupor with a “sir, sir, SIR!” proceed to place drink orders with a dozen individual drinks. Oblivious of the solo transit worker behind them who ends up placing an order for one, small coffee. The parent ordering for their entire team, situationally unaware of the line of suckers behind. (Me included)
As I make a quick calculation of my time remaining, another announcement blasts from the cashier.
“There is now a thirty minute wait for drinks.” I turn to my right to see the glass case of breakfast offerings. A reflection of the barista squeezing whipped cream and caramel sauce on top of massive, plastic drink containers reflects back off the stale pastries and sugar bombs assorting the cage.
And then there is the cost. My Americano is a mild infraction at $4.75. Bitter, weak, acidic and a mandatory return in any country that actually knows coffee, but all the rage here in the land of weak drip and sugar. I decide to flee to greener pastures. It’s not the wait that’s most bothersome, or the cost, subpar coffee, or the need to be around people who can’t stop swiping. It’s the acceptance of this entire experience. I simply don’t want to play along. As I walk away, I can’t help think of an expression that keeps rearing its ugly head. “Dumber by the day.” I can’t help but feel a growing distance between myself and my culture. I just can’t keep playing along.
By the way, this description was being kind. There is more I could have said about this little experience but I know there are sensitive types out there.
So, how does this apply to us? You and me? Creative types? I can’t help but think back to The Impressionists. Monet, Manet, Cezanne and the rest of crew who year after year took a beating from the establishment. Submitting work to the grand salons only to be forcefully rejected again and again. There was a choice to be made. Conform or conflict. They could have chosen to learn from the masters, paint like masters, get in line to kiss the rings of the salon runners. Instead, on the run from debts and failed dealings, they chose to continue to make their work, in their way.
We simply must demand more intelligent solutions to our societal and cultural failings, and we need to push the deadline for creative success far into the future. In other words, short play vs long play. If you cave and conform you face one long term reality, and if you buck the common trends you will face yet another. It is entirely possible to live in that eighty percent, middle gray, happy with average, life, but that is not where the magic happens. It is also not my place to tell you where to be, or how to live, or how to be happy. I know many who live in the eighty who are successful and content. They might even drink the coffee from their hotel ROOM. (This stuff is the most vile, horrendous, awful swill you can possibly imagine.)
DAY THREE AT SPE:
- I had an amazing conversation with a guy from Intellect Books.
- I am asked to speak at an upcoming photojournalism event, an event I have been to twice before but never as a speaker.
- I meet a photo editor I’ve known about for twenty five years. She is incredibly nice and incredibly small.
- I have a chat with two photo educators, one from New England and the other from the Southeast. I show them AG23 and they say “Oh, this is what I need.” “I didn’t know Blurb could do things like this.”
- And..then…the…artificial…intelligence.
The morning session kicks off with Julieanne Kost talking artificial intelligence in both Photoshop and Lightroom. First, if you ever get a chance to see a JK presentation, treat yourself. She is fast, funny, ad libs constantly and manages to avoid saying the word “um” for the entire fifty minutes. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the new AI features in BETA versions of both PS and LR, but there is no denying we have entered a new era in imaging. Need falloff when you shot at f/22? Need to add? Need to remove? Need to blend, stack, mask, denoise, fabricate flaming arrows through any scene while making it all look real? It’s effortless.
Julieanne was keen to point out the difference between AI and Generative AI, so power through the above efficiency AI features, and then prompt the generative to make work that doesn’t even require you being there. Need an African safari or Oktoberfest? No worries, and no need to travel or get your Yellow Fever shot. Just prompt. Move, adjust, perfect.
I can’t see how any of us survive this, but I don’t mean I will need to track down Linda Hamilton so she and I can battle a flesh covered, hyperalloy combat chassis on Sunset Boulevard. I mean how does anyone in the creative fields survive when a single human can prompt all the stills, motion, copy, design, illustrations and artwork required for just about any purpose or brand. I don’t know the answer to this. I’m just saying it feels like all of us should be looking for a new career guidance counselor. I mean I can always survive teaching hook kicks, but what are the rest of you going to do?
Someone asked me if this was a good event for me. My answer was “100% yes.” I’m here collecting data, mood, and trends while blending those together to predict the future. I’m not here to make books. What I like about being here is this event has forced me to confront ingrained ideology, bias, and traditional methods that are now surely on the way out. Print is still very much alive, revered in fact. Things like the Authenticity Initiative are in place, struggling to plug the holes of the artificial intelligence dam. Students still want to create. Faculty still want to teach. The world needs creativity more than ever.
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I truly believe the revolution has started. I’ve struggled to join the return to shooting film but I think this is the driving force behind it. AI 🤖 is the enemy without a doubt (just my opinion). So anyway, I dug out my trusty Canon F1 went to the drug store and got a battery and got a 10 pack of overpriced Kodak Gold!!!!
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION 👍🏼
Author
I don’t see AI as the enemy, but there is a difference between AI and generative AI.
Is the prompt not just a brush stroke?
Author
Kinda, without having to have a brush or knowledge of painting.
I would say okay old man…except I’m right there with you (in age) and in spirit about the dumbing down of the society. These kids have to take care of us when we’re older…might be time to move to somewhere hot..with a beach…somewhere with less of those people. Any suggestions?
Author
Beach is sounding pretty darn good.
We recently had a training about AI at work. These systems take your input, deconstruct it into linguistic building blocks (“tokens”) and search their database (the “training set”) for data which is statistically most closely correlated to your input tokens. From the matching data, the system constructs the output (for example, a picture or a text). The results are, in fact, amazing. There are, however, limitations. Such a system won’t be able to provide the answer “I don’t know”, simply because there will always be some result data. It is on the user to verify whether the output is correct. By design, the systems are not capable of analytic judgement and struggle at math problems – they will just guess the solution.
Given these limitations, I don’t think that AI is capable of being creative. By its statistical mode of operation, such a system will always produce averages from their training data. The designers actually try to overcome this by providing tuning parameters to add some kind of “entropy” to the statistical matching process. But something truly creative and disruptive – like your example of the impressionists, where like minds segregate from the mainstream, inspire each other and make something totally new – that’s beyond the capabilities of AI. Those systems lack “intention”, that ferment for making Art. On the other hand, if I were in the business of product photography or basic illustration, or in the lower journalistic ranks, I would be *very* concerned about AI.
On a final note: I can absolutely relate to your sentiment about the increasing perceived distance between oneself and culture/society. I’m feeling the same.
My friend is working on AI chat tool that answers customer questions for a Amazon like platform. She told me that they are actually setting up how creative the tool is. They call it AI confabulation. If they let it loose, it’s answering to customers questions not quite in line with what is written in site manual and regulations. It just creates answer out of the blue, even working on fairy small database (not even close to what chatgpt has under it’s belt). Scarry..
Author
And it’s getting better every hour.
Author
Thomas, well said. And key insights here. My question is, does your statement exist today or tomorrow as well. Will it learn to be creative?
AI = average.
Author
like my math scores.
Recently, an ad exec friend told me that the majority of photography now used in commercials, does not involve a photographer.
Author
I believe that. And same for motion content in the very near future.
According to an advertising creative director I met recently, most creatives for commercials are now produced without a photographer in sight. It is inevitable that photography as a career, and a way to earn a crust, is in serious decline. But it has been for a while. It is possible there will be a reaction to ‘fake’ imagery, and pictures with proven provenance (a negative) will be sought after, this will probably be more evident in the art world as costs are king in the commercial sector.
Author
Yes, I fear that design, photography, illustration, content creation, marketing, copyediting, filmmaking, etc. As we know them….endangered species.
The decline of photography as career began a long time ago, way before anybody I know had even heard of AI. The “golden age”, as I like to call it, peaked and plateaued during the 60s and 70s (in Britain) and then began a slow decline that wasn’t evenly spread: the top guns kept on being top guns for a while longer, but the second-division pretty much felt the pain from the end of the 70s onwards. Perversely, the bottom rung seemed to do better longer. I guess that was because until cellphone cameras arrived, people (civilians) still felt obliged to use the local guy to handle weddings and other such official photography for them.
Spain was a huge market for the local shooter if only because of religion: nuptials, first communions, all those things were marked by a visit to or from the local photographer. Not so much today, even here. The other source of constant work for those guys was the need for small ID photos that seemed to accompany everything in life. Only one photographer remains in my local area, where before there were up to four in business at the same time. As I’ve mentioned in the past, that huge fall off in paper/chemical sales soon after the advent of digital was why the wholesaler with whom I had a connection folded.
As for dumbing down, across the social classes, I’d agree that cellphones and iPads carry a huge burden of guilt. People no longer have any manners, and when parents sit at restaurant tables with their kids, their noses also stuck in cellphones, why would the offspring even imagine there was something very wrong with the situation? Conversation, as with another person, using the spoken word, seems to have become uncool. God help us all; it will not end well. It can’t.
Author
I saw the first implosion in about 1997. It’s been ugly since. Not sure what the future is.
Danielsan,
Whatever you think of Elon Musk: Good or evil, human or alien. He said it years ago…”We will lose control of A.I., I tried to warn people, no one would listen.” Time to call Linda Hamilton and sharpen up on the old “hook-kick.”
Author
I would gladly call Linda if she would take my call. I’d even drive her to Mexico in a CJ5.