This is an adaptation of my weekly newsletter, Adventures Big & Small. If you want to receive emails like these, click here to subscribe.
AI has been around a while now, but I’ve never really written about it. In photography circles, it seems the only thing anyone talks about: Should we adopt or resist? Will art survive? Will we lose our jobs?
I’ve got plenty of thoughts, most of them a little pessimistic about our obsession with making life ever more “efficient” and “optimized.” And with our apparent need for more and more and more.
Every inch of my soul says we need the opposite. We already have enough — more than enough. What we really need is to slow down and savor it.
But when it comes to you and me and the way we work together to create pictures of your family, I don’t think AI matters much at all.
The photographs that hold weight are the ones tied to a memory. The way the salt spray smelled, or the sand slipped through little fingers. And that memory is recalled by a picture taken within an experience. In real life.
Art has always been about that story. From painting to music to photography, what we love isn’t just the finished piece but the human experience behind it.
We love walking into a gallery and meeting the painter, learning about where they are from, their values, and how they make their art. We read about musicians and relate to their lives, then go see them perform live and make a connection with their lyrics that cannot be replicated by a robot.
So no, I don’t fear for my job.
The choice to have a family is, in itself, a surrender. A release of all the things AI represents – of control and perfection and efficiency – and an embrace of the beautiful uncertainty of real life.
Your life is not algorithmic, and so neither are the pictures that spark your most cherished memories.
My job is safe; you’re always going to want these pictures.
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