When creating your media content is to tell stories and when is it to make up stories? For everybody it comes a moment when inspiration, motivation and drive to go out and take photos might be weaker than normal… if there is even one thing left differentiating real photography from AI generated images and debatable beach selfies taken from the worst possible angle, that is the the gritty grind: the willingness to drag along that camere and those lenses, setting the shot, getting up at 4AM waiting for that perfect moment that might never come.
The thought of having a great image in the bag ready to post and share is appealing but sometimes it just doesn’t happen either because you can’t be bothered making the effort or because the day just doesn’t pan out as you wanted. Some photographers waited for years for the perfect shot to materialise. I mean, look at this!
…and then, sometimes, we make stuff up
Take a look again at the picture at the top of this post… cool, ah?! And now take a look at this one
Same day, same concept, a little play with reflections, slow shutter and here you have two nice shots of a moody, cloudy day. Except the first one is made up… well, partially at least. It was a moody and cloudy day but the clouds were nothing like what you see in the first picture, they were flat like the light was and, indeed, not dramatic at all. So, with Photoshop, I changed the sky to something a bit more dramatic and I also managed to create the reflection in the water (there is a neat trick to do that but… that’s a different story).
An ethical maze: is it cheating or is it a new world?
I think it is impossible to say or judge, for that matter… we can divide the world in as many categories as we want, say for example the purists, the 100% digital creators, the “I can’t be bothered I’ll use AI”, the artists that manipulate RAW files the way film photographers manipulated their stock in the dark room. The boundaries are blurred, to a scary extent in some cases, but as far as photography is concerned I think we don’t necessarily need to make distinctions because… because these things don’t mix in the first place as long as we own up to the true nature of an image. As long as we are honest about how our images are created, as long as we are open about sharing the true story beyond them, then, I believe, we are all good because these creative means they all have their own merits. Of course, if you ask me, I’d pick an average landscape photo that costed the photographer a 5 hours hike, in the cold and wet over a photoshopped poster-perfect picture all day, any day but then, I don’t feel I can criticise those who create and/or like image created with other means because there is a craft beyond, perhaps also artistry. Am I saying that perhaps this is true also for those beach selfies where it looks like they are taken through a peephole? Well… no, no chance
