I recently saw a news item announcing the winners of a local camera club competition. The images were very accomplished, a little ‘twee’ in their concepts and obvious in their subject matter with children, dogs and birds featuring amongst the winners. However, they were very well done. The issue for me was not the quality of the photographs but the fact that they had little to do with ‘real life’ and everything to do with ‘fake life’. Post-production life.
The post-production was so extreme that the aesthetic of the photographs was similar to that seen in AI images. I commented that this was a shame and I was met with one comment stating that AI was against the club rules, completely missing the point of what I had said, and a further comment by one of the photographers challenging me to do better and to visit them and explain how to do better. I had obviously ruffled some digital feathers. I commented that I did have a little ‘skin in the game’ and was told that in that case I should know better.
It is just a fact that many camera club members are advanced in age and often retired. They have the funds to invest in expensive kit and spend many hours learning and polishing their post production skills. Sadly, the result of this often results in technically polished images that lack passion, emotion or originality. These are then entered into club competitions and revered.
The problemfor me is that too often the final image has little or nothing to do with the original capture. Photoshop consumes whatever was photographed replacing imperfections with surface perfection and honesty with fiction.
This is not my approach to what constitutes successful photography, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is when this work is awarded prizes it sets a marker for future work. It sets a judging agenda that encourages the replication of the approach. For me that is the problem. Such work fills the pages of the amateur photo magazines (at least those that survive) and at one time much of Flickr. You can also find it on Instagram. It is all around us, but its sense of falcity opens the door for an acceptance of AI imagery the ultimate destination for manipulated imagery.
With so many photographers speaking out against AI and with camera clubs constructing rules to prevent its use it seems strange to me that they appear to be so open to its aesthetic and eager to defend that aesthetic even though it has little if anything to do with photography.
Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on pre-sale.
© Grant Scott 2024
Humility is often a prerequisite to learning and improvement. One or two of your correspondents have not realised that yet it seems. But Arrogant Intelligence has been around a while.
Very interesting and valid observation. My photography does make use of Photoshop (but not AI in the true sense) during post-processing when I want to produce a particular style of artwork which I would never enter into a photo club competition judged by accredited judges since I know it would not succeed. I might enter it in my local club’s assessment night because it doesn’t use accredited judges. When I am not wanting to create “something different” during post-processing, I do very little to the images as shot because I endeavour to create what I want in camera. Since the vast majority of my work these days if Contemporary, there’s little point in entering them in most club competitions either!
It makes me question the quality of the judging!
This was interesting to read and quite coincidental timing wise. Neale James and a guest were discussing something similar around this in a Patreon episode of The Photowalk. The language used around AI created images and those that have been processed with Photoshop, often by people that aren’t involved in photography, is very interesting. The guest suggested that increasingly comments go along the lines of an image being so ‘good’, that it must be AI. In comparison when people say an image has been photoshopped, it is often derogatory. So it could be a trend that will become ever more prevalent, that due to the appreciation of AI created imagery, some photographers will go to great lengths to process their files in a way to replicate the AI look. This will no doubt likely be something that is accelerated by the algorithms for those that are chasing Likes.
I hope not