AI in Photography. I'd Rather Earn My Images.

Feb 15

Artificial Intelligence could create more perfect versions of all of my work. My photos, my entire videography archive. With a simple prompt or two.

But AI will never be able to give me the feeling of accomplishment that I’ve earned from traveling, living all of these moments I’ve captured, and learning to document the world as I see it over years of practice and experience.

Should I learn photography if AI can do it?

Here’s the thing. Photography is something you do with your brain, feet, eyes, ears, hands.

No matter how perfect AI photography becomes, it’s only ever going to replace the final 5% of what photography really is.

Whether you bother to learn photography or not comes down to whether that other 95% matters to you.

I recently assembled an entire YouTube video out of old and new footage from my archive that illustrates how far I’ve come as a videographer and filmmaker in the last several years.

I figured, what better time to embrace the humanity in sucking at something, and eventually getting a little better at it, slowly but surely, over years of hard work?

I could have used AI to create everything in this video, but I wouldn’t have the memories, experiences, skills, and even friends I made from traveling the world with my camera.

I think that kind of growth, and having something real to look back on, will matter to the kind of people those things have always mattered to.

But someone needs to be honest. Photographers were fighting over scraps before AI, and now? Building a career out of any of this will become all but impossible.

Why choose the hard way?

AI isn’t going back into its Pandora's box.

I increasingly find myself wishing that this technology could have been reserved for things that are really, truly important to our progress as a species. Medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, or solving the environmental crisis instead of contributing so catastrophically to it.

As AI in photography continues to evolve, the choice becomes clearer: do you want perfect AI-generated images, or do you want the irreplaceable experience of capturing the world through your own lens?

I said at the top that artificial intelligence could create everything in my recent video with a simple prompt.

I also really can't think of anything I want less than to sit in a room, in front of a screen, telling a piece of software what I want it to spit out instead of going outside and experiencing all of these things with my own eyes, nose, ears.

There’s a fine line- well, actually not really. There’s a huge gaping moral and ethical canyon of personal values between using tools and technology to streamline something tedious about your workflow and voluntarily removing your own soul from the equation.

I realize I’m largely preaching to the choir, but for those of you who disagree, I see you and respect you, too. That’s why I don’t want to say, “never use AI for anything ever”.

Instead, I want to ask, “Are you honestly and objectively taking stock of what you give up whenever you choose to hand over parts of the creative process to a machine? Are you registering that as a conscious decision at all?”

Jake Frew, a wonderful filmmaker and creator on YouTube, recently said in a video essay, "I'm sure the perfection & plagiarism machine will be great for company profit margins, but it's not going to be great at making me care."

He was talking about consuming media created by AI, but I think the same sentiment applies to generating things with it.

Can AI replace professional photographers?

If not now, then likely very soon in most applications as we know them today.

There are myriad optimistic takes, “AI in photography will make real photographers more valuable.”

No. I disagree.

The trouble with this logic? It’s always coming from the photographers themselves, not the people who’d hire them. It’s beginning to read more like artists trying to keep themselves convinced as the world crashes down around us.

I’m a street photographer, i.e., no one would have paid me for my work before in the first place, so I’ll just go ahead and be the realist in the room for all of us:

What it’ll come down to in the end is what it always comes down to in business. ROI.

Companies will not voluntarily spend more capital on something that they do not believe will drive a return. Certainly not for any kind of intangible, immeasurable good will among consumers, if that’s what you’re banking on.

Especially since AI has been so successfully and thoroughly crammed down everyone’s throat already.

My guess? AI in “photography” will only become more normalized and acceptable. Inevitable.

Photography will be like oil painting, or pottery, or any of the other fine arts that are nice and beautiful, but no longer necessary.

“Oh you had a real photographer at your wedding? How eclectic and vintage of you!!”

I’m not saying that no one will value photography. I’m just highlighting that it won’t be enough.

What’s Next for Photography?

I empathize with those watching their dreams or livelihoods dry up. As someone who works a digital marketing job, my days are feeling pretty numbered as well.

Not exactly sure what I’ll be doing to support myself in a year or two as a mid-level marketer. Honestly, at this point, I just hope it doesn’t involve staring into a laptop screen or talking about AI anymore.

But where my videography and photography is concerned, I have the luxury of not being paid for my work. Now is the first time that not doing this as a job has felt so freeing.

Regardless of how great AI photography gets, I’ll never use it myself. There’s no incentive in my case, so they can’t make me.

And that feels… incredibly liberating.

The bright-ish side. (Depending on who you talk to)

Losing this as a career is going to hurt a lot of people, but the one silver lining I find myself turning to is simple: When photography really, truly becomes a hobby like painting, at least we’ll live in a world where everyone left doing it just loves the art form for what it is.

And for me personally? Nothing much has changed.

I’ll keep grinding away on this same learning curve for another decade so that I can look back on my own progression, knowing that everything I've achieved is the result of my work ethic and will to improve, slowly over time.

I’ll stay on the path that ends with me earning real, demonstrable skills.

I’ll refuse to ride the coattails of a technology that I had nothing to do with creating.

I’ll relish the feeling of achievement that comes from learning a skill or two in this life that can’t be scrubbed away in a power outage.