Photography Will Persist

Derek Shapton is a Toronto-based photographer, writer and director. He is the recipient of numerous industry honors and an Associate at West Side Studio.

At the start of the ‘19th century, painting and drawing dominated the visual arts.

For millennia, these were the only practical means of making two-dimensional imagery. Painting, in particular, was seen as a creative pinnacle, with artist academies, celebrity critics, prestigious competitions, and elite schools all vying for attention and the privilege of anointing the next great painting talent.

It was a period of tremendous activity but also one where many innovative ideas were actively discouraged by the status quo. Thirty years later, a seismic shift had occurred. Some even declared painting to be dead. Photography had arrived.

However, in hindsight, it is clear that far from striking a fatal blow to art, the doubts photography inspired in creators of the day actually led to a flourishing of form and method unlike anything else in history.

Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Abstraction, Photorealism. A stunning creative explosion in response to a rapidly developing technology. With AI, it is happening again.

Tweak those last few paragraphs to talk about photography instead of painting and drawing, and substitute AI for photography as the disruptive technology, and we are left with an uncanny parallel of our present day, complete with vested interests and institutional gatekeepers debating the new technology’s viability, anxiety growing among practitioners who fear for their livelihoods, and a flourishing of creative responses to the new threat.

 

“I think we are at the start of a new era in marketing and advertising production.“

And just as painting emerged strengthened and revitalized, photography as an art form will persist. But where does that leave professionals, in particular commercial photographers?

Unfortunately, some of the fears are well founded. Genre painting declined with the development of portable photographic gear. Manual printing, darkroom equipment manufacture, analog film production, and photo labs all faded away as digital photography became accessible. And AI will reshape the creative-arts job market, and not just in the photography sector.

Specifically, I think we are at the start of a new era in marketing and advertising production where concepting, storyboarding, the writing of treatments and bid decks, aspects of copywriting, some types of 3D modelling, and some of the more tedious elements of photographic and moving-image workflow will be offloaded, at least in part, to AI “assistants” like Chat GPT, Midjourney, and their descendants.

And that is in fact the key role I see for AI in the near future, as well as where I imagine its main impact on the commercial photography industry; as a generative ideation and conceptualization aid and iterative post-pro- duction mode that will still require a human guiding hand and discerning editing eye.

At the same time, many other opportunities will appear, and some individuals—who may not have the strange blend of skills needed for success as a traditional commercial or advertising photographer will suddenly find themselves in demand.

In particular, as presently engineered, the creation of practically useful AI images requires a peculiar verbal ability as well as an odd programmatic mindset that will not come naturally to everyone.

It is easy to feed a prompt to Midjourney and be delightedly surprised by the random output, but when used that way it is little more than a toy. Professionals will emerge, and in fact are already emerging, who are able to rapidly produce consistent and controllable results, and who may soon become key members of creative teams in same way that prop stylists, set builders, and editors are today.

One way of looking at it is that while AI may not eliminate your job, there is a chance that someone using it might. This being the case, even if you currently have no plans for using AI directly, you should start to explore. It will become part of your vocabulary, just like “Metadata” and “RAW” did when digital photography became widespread, and discussing it intelligently will be as much a part of the job as talking to a retoucher about layers.

Don’t be put off by the currently obtuse AI-engine interfaces. Just as manual HTML and CSS coding were made much less necessary by friendly interfaces like Squarespace, AI will soon be far easier to use. A Midjourney plugin for Capture One with seamless library integration? Sign me up.

If you are currently in a pre-law program, consider specializing in intellectual property. Along with millions of mediocre pictures, AI will also generate thousands of billable hours for copyright attorneys. The ways it interacts with existing imagery during the generative process are going to become increasingly contentious. And questions regarding the legitimacy of photography as a depiction of reality will become more pointed, and the discussion more crucial, although that is a topic for a lengthy column of its own.

Finally, don’t stop taking pictures. A valid criticism of AI imagery is that it lacks humanity, or soul, or heart - - whatever phrase you use, it’s hard to refute. However, in 80% of use-cases, AI generated imagery will be good enough. There are some types of practice however, like long-form photojournalism, documentary storytelling, and environmental portraiture of little-known subjects, that may not ever work quite as well when AI-generated. So focus on what it can’t do. Concentrate on that other 20%.

Last but not least, don’t be discouraged. Photography didn’t kill painting, but instead became useful in its own right. The same thing will happen with AI. The question photographers are faced with is how to navigate that transition.

This story originally appeared in the Summer 2023 Applied Arts magazine. To subscribe, for just $19.99 a year, click here .