Someone quipped that Trump couldn’t spell AI even after giving him the second letter. AI is a big deal, and although I pay little attention to it in many areas, I’ve seen what it can do in photography, much more than my little illustration will demonstrate.
Thimpu, Buthan, 1998. I asked these four little schoolgirls if I could do a portrait of them, and they obliged. When the color slide was developed (remember? I had to use film) I was disappointed. The girl on the far right was looking at something else. (Actually it was another tourist who diverted her attention, even after I asked him to wait until I had made my photograph. Grrr!). I scanned the image, even taking the digital representation and posting it in Photoshop. The app offers an option to move the eyes of a person from right to left and vice-versa. It failed. I gave up.
Then I realized that I not only didn’t need her in the image, but I didn’t want her in it at all. The other three girls are looking directly into the camera, as I had requested, and add an intimacy that I had hoped would be there when I pushed the shutter.
Here’s the original.
Lightroom (part of Photoshop) has a “Remove” tool, a little paintbrush that the photographer uses to eliminate distracting elements in images, like telephone poles growing out of peoples’ heads. It “looks around” at neighboring pixels and replaces the painted spot with pixels that blend into the photo. I “painted” the girl on the right, and after lightening the remaining three girls and darkening the background I was pleased with this result.
What’s important to understand is that a careful photographer has a purpose in the image he’s making. My purpose would have been met had the girl on the right not looked away. But removing her from the image doesn’t alter my purpose at all. Before digital photography photographers had countless tricks they could use in developing and printing to selectively change an image in order to create the intended result, the one that existed in the photographer’s mind when he snapped the shutter.
In this image I haven’t changed the colors, altered the faces, or made any changes that would suggest artifice. That stuff offends me.
So that’s my take on AI. It’s a useful tool when it’s applied to reveal the image that I had before I snapped the shutter.
BTW. These ladies are nearing 40.