A collection of thoughts, ongoing projects, and the media I’m consuming; delivered every other week.
Hey there! I’ve missed you
A lot has happened since we last spoke and yet not a lot has changed. It’s somehow already the middle of May and Mumbai’s relentless heat is making itself known.
Here’s a string of thoughts on image generative tools, as I try to make sense of them:
The advent of AI tools is upon us. As an image maker, the ones that affect me directly are – Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Dall•E, and Adobe Firefly.
It’s easy to be shortsighted and find imperfections in the resulting images.
They’re impressive tools which are far from perfect, but given the rate of development, it’s only a matter of time that we’re unable to distinguish a “real” photograph from an artificially generated one.
Misinformation is going to be rampant. There’s no way to avoid bad actors.
Product photography as a practice is at most 3 years away from being redundant to those looking for generic solutions. You’re already able to input existing images into Midjourney and ask it to remix them. Adobe Firefly will soon let you take it a step further by creating a 3D version of it, and inserting them into any artificially generated environment you’d like.
The tools allow you to emulate any format, camera, or lens set of your choice. Access to expensive gear is no longer an issue.
Creating something from nothing is only a text prompt away. It’s a great starting point for something new.
Text prompts can ask that the work be created in the style of “insert your favourite artist”.
But for how long? We’re in the LimeWire days of AI tools. Can regulation even keep up with something that is evolving so quickly? Will artists license their likeness? Can you quantify that?
There will be a steady rise in mediocrity. The output is only as good as the inputs. The tools aren’t inherently creative, people are.
Language will present interesting limitations on the output. There are always things lost when expressing an idea in your mind into words. This adds yet another hurdle.
It’s a matter of time before people begin gatekeeping prompts. Those who can bridge the gap between the text prompts and the desired output will be sought after.
There are things that you can’t picture/imagine until you see them. And moments you just can’t make up. It’s what makes all photography, but especially street and documentary photography so exciting.
There’s also the inability to reframe your point of view by just taking a step in any direction, as you would if you were there in person, which entirely changes how you see a scene. Place three photographers in a space and you’ll get vastly different results.
These are fleeting moments that someone with a discerning eye has to deem valuable enough to capture, let alone have the photographic ability to. That’ll be the hardest to replace. And for that reason, it will likely hold the highest value over time.
Here are some early experiments on Midjourney:
Some housekeeping 🧼
My website recently got a fresh coat of paint – check it out here!
What I’m reading 🔦
User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant
The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fischer
Teenage Engineering – a company designing beautiful audio hardware that ditches touchscreens for tactile knobs and buttons. Their latest product is the TP7 field recorder.
“Proudly Second Best” – a simple yet wonderfully creative and effective campaign by DAVID Madrid for Ikea.
Notes from Prince Harry’s Ghostwriter – not to mention Phil Knight and Andre Agassi – an honest and fascinating essay on the journey of a writer.
LoveFrom, Serif: a modern interpretation of Baskerville created by Jony Ive’s LoveFrom -
On a project like this, we can spend as much time as we want – we are the client. Luxury is the wrong word, but we don’t often have this kind of opportunity in our line of work. There’s always space, not necessarily to improve, but to refine something.
Who I’m listening to 📻
Talk soon
Thanks for making the time to read this.
Stay hydrated,
Vihan Shah