AI may be intuitive - but it isn’t creative

I had a talk with my good friend and superb photographer Richard Hallman (https://richardhallman.com/) about AI and how it could impact his profession. Richard is the best outdoor, action sports photographer I know. His images reach another level in clarity, sharpness, richness and vibrancy. I asked him how he accomplished this - bringing such life to photos that are often shot in filtered light in the midst of a driving snow storm.?

Richard shoots raw - that is, he doesn’t contain the initial snap of the photo to a format like .jpg. That allows him much more command of editing, adjusting brightness and saturation to optimize the image. And he does it fast - turning around a morning shoot so images are available that afternoon.?

But you know what - AI can post-edit even faster, and possibly, more precisely. Richard is a master - he sets up shots, composes them, instructs his models, tells them what to do and where to do it, and then selects the right angle to capture the action, freeze framing, turning action into art. AI can’t do that.?

But AI can be trained to make the nuanced adjustments that create the vibrancy and realistic qualities that hallmark a Hallman image.?

A recent article in Social Media Examiner states marketers can use generative AI to improve their efforts in these six areas:

1. Generation
2. Extraction
3. Summarization
4. Rewriting
5. Question-answering
6. Classification

Imagine a future Richard who completes a shoot and dumps his memory card with a thousand photos onto a hard drive (or more likely, uploads them to his personalized AI cloud slave). Sure he might do a little editing in advance, but he’s comfortable allowing AI to make the first pass of enhancing photos, based on some instructions he provides. AI will also classify all the shots, write descriptions and label each one for future reference. And - oh yeah - it will apply the special post editing magic that Richard has taught it.?

Within minutes, Richard will be able to review and select images to send to his client for review, and any special instructions he receives can be passed along to AI for adjustments. AI doesn’t mind the feedback or being told to do it all over again. It only learns from it to produce better results the next time. Now Richard is back out shooting on his next assignment, instead of spending hours in the post editing process.

Artificial intelligence won't replace jobs; instead, it will take over specific tasks. It's up to you whether you use that boost to scale up the same, boring old content—or use artificial intelligence to support you while you upskill, try new things, branch out, and become ever more creative.?

Here’s a link to that Social Media Examiner Article:?

https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/ai-for-business-use-cases-and-trends/

And here’s a link to Richard Hallman’s Instagram page for even more inspiration:

https://www.instagram.com/richardhallman_photo/

And as I always say, “Technology is nothing without Humanity.”