A.I. Hates Getting Dusty: Maybe Photography Has a Future

The first part of this essay looked at the dismaying revolution in image creation, which is threatening to make photography obsolete. The rise of computational photography on mobile phones, and especially the remarkable improvement in generative tools, means that traditional photography, even when done by highly skilled individuals with remarkably capable tools, is at significant risk of being declared redundant.

So what will happen? That is what I take a stab at answering here.

I think the industry and the profession will bifurcate. The simple stuff is already gone. Very few of us invite professionals to take photos of our children’s birthdays. Unless it is a significant one (like a first birthday, or a sixteenth), or one is an influencer, it is often enough to pull out one’s mobile phone and take casual photos and videos of the big occasion. Same with baptisms, parties and, increasingly, even funerals.

There are still big occasions, though, where professionals come into play, and where an amateur (even one with a really good mobile phone) still cannot produce the quality required. Think weddings. No bride wants a desultory set of pictures on her big day (forget grooms – they tend to concentrate on just getting through the endless set of ceremonies). Major corporate events also benefit from proper, professional photography. No company worth its salt wants to leave the documentation of significant occasions to amateurs with mobile phones.

The second place where AI, and bad amateur equipment, will not take the place of a skilled professional any time soon is sports photography. A properly composed, skilfully taken and edited sports photograph cannot be faked. This is the world of $15,000 lenses attached to ridiculously capable cameras, taking photographs that freeze a hundred high quality images a second. There is a reason it is called a photo finish. Many foot and motor races are decided on the evidence of, yes, a photo. This includes the remarkable end to the two marathons at the Tokyo World Championships this month. The sight of two exhausted marathoners, straining every last sinew to breast the tape, was an unforgettable one, and precisely because it was captured by a camera. A brutal tackle in a rugby game. But even this will call for creativity, such as this amazing wonder of composition and editing from the 2020 Olympics, of Simone Biles.

This is where people like my friend Mwarv excel. There is no AI tool that will be covered in dust to produce superlative images of the Safari Rally. A casual observer with their mobile phone will not manage a close-up, under floodlights, of tears of joy from halfway across the pitch.

Perhaps another, rather ironic, place where AI cannot compete is news photography. Why ironic? Because the truism goes that the best camera for an unexpected photo is the one at hand. You may have the perfect equipment back home, but when the plane crashes in front of you, or the politician stumbles on the stage, the grainy mobile phone photo may be the difference between the image being captured and documented for history, and it simply being only an event that those who were there speak about. Photo after photo of the big events – from protests, to concerts, to political rallies – is now the result of what many call citizen journalism – an army of ordinary people armed with their mobile phone cameras. These are remarkably useful in the aggregate, especially when they show different angles of contested events.

However, even then, great equipment in the hands of a skilled (and prepared) photographer will always do a better job than thousands of mobiles waving from the crowd. That is why the very best news photographs redefine history. The Soweto Uprising of 1976, and the brutality of the apartheid regime’s response to it, were encapsulated in Sam Nzima’s remarkable photograph of Hector Pieterson’s lifeless body.

What about wildlife photography? That is my particular alley. People who know me from my photography know me mainly for my photography of birds. These are a particularly difficult subject – skittish, often tiny (and thus challenging to even focus on), with unpredictable habits. Taking a good photograph of a bird requires patience, a mastery of the correct skills and camera settings, and sometimes just pure luck.

A stupendously beautiful sunbird in my backyard. This bird is tinier than your hand

The same goes for most other wildlife photography. We enjoy photographs of a big cat hunt, while being only dimly aware of how much it takes to capture the shot. Any wildlife photographer will tell you about going off on a game drive that yields nothing of value. The best photographers are often inadvertent biologists. They have to study not just the species in general, but also the individuals they aim to photograph, in order to understand them well enough to get the best out of them photographically. Many years ago, I met a couple deep in Niassa Province in Mozambique. They were wildlife documentary makers, and they told me that they had spent five years in the bush, shooting footage that would, at best, result in a 90-minute video. Many of us do not have the patience, or the resources, for that kind of investment. Also, and more apposite to this discussion, there are fewer and fewer individuals and institutions willing to pay for it, either to purchase the pictures or to finance the production of documentaries. There is still space for some, but you need to be your very best, seeking an ever-shrinking market.

Still, all is not lost in the world of photography. And the reason for my optimism is a rather odd one. Maybe we are answering the wrong question and looking in the wrong direction with all our handwringing about the abilities of AI to generate realistic-looking imagery. Maybe the future of photography is not (only) about the image. Why do I say this? We have been here before. A century and a bit ago, when photography improved enough technically, and became ubiquitous enough, the world of commissioned painters seemed to dry up. When painters were no longer required for the vast majority of work depicting families and the natural world, painting (and art) was declared dead. Photography was supposed to eliminate all of that. In some ways, it did, and many painters lost their livelihoods forever. However, the art of painting did not disappear. It took off in unexpected ways. First, it went upmarket. There are some who felt that an oil painting made for a much richer portrait than a ‘soulless’ photograph. The painters of such portraits were much sought-after, commanding premium prices, and especially because the competition had thinned out. Additionally, the declaration of visual art as dead was highly exaggerated. Art is still commanding astronomical prices. A Basquiat painting will sell for a hundred and ten million dollars. A tenth of a billion dollars. And this is not just about dead artists – American artist Jasper Johns had one of his paintings sell for a hundred and ten million dollars as well, while he was (and still remains) alive and kicking.

That, to me, points to an additional two possible directions photographers could take. One is creating one-off, or limited edition, prints of their work. People still love to say that they have one of only a few existing works of art, and none other will ever be created. It not only creates a great primary market, but may also induce a secondary market for these prints to be sold. The second direction is to leave the perfect depictions of real life to AI and mobile phones, and move into greater creativity, with photographs as the base. That is the direction that photographic artists such as Mutua Matheka have taken. His Punk Gukas and Cucus series reinterprets senior citizens, placing them in fabulous hairstyles in order to depict an interpretation of the current state of Kenya. Of course, anyone can type in a prompt such as ‘elderly black man in fancy hairstyle’ and get a result, but it would not have the impact of Mutua’s work. This is because it is more about the artist’s creative eye than it is purely about photography. In this case, verisimilitude is not only beside the point, it is not even in the conversation.

Another direction an astute photographer will explore is storytelling. The solitary image is the easiest to replace with a mobile phone photo or an AI-generated image. But figuring out a story and documenting it through photographs will not go away any time soon. Human beings are hardwired to consume narratives, and a good narrative illustrated through photography will always be appreciated. Whether it is about families, communities and societies, or the story of a city, or even technical photography that illustrates a good story, this is a form of photography that will continue to have its place, however much technology develops.

A final one (for now at least) is telling the art of the photo. The process of creating something of beauty and of value is always of interest. That is why photographers have taken to YouTube as an outlet for this. Many of us have taught ourselves photography from studying under the experts.

Often though, some do not even make the photography itself the focus of the piece. What photographers such as Thomas Heaton do extremely well through their YouTube channels is include you into the process of how they go about their photography. The point is not necessarily so that you can copy their process. It is about drawing you into their creative journey. It can lead you to hours of YouTube bingeing, and the photographers continue to earn a decent living from it. And what’s interesting is that you need not even stick to your knitting. Kym Illman’s YouTube channel is ostensibly about being a photographer on the Formula One circuit, but its more interesting content is about travel, and the joys and occasional pains about front-of-the-plane travel (including some interesting detours in Kenya).

Real life is the final frontier. If one builds up a good enough following (or, as some say, builds a ‘brand’), then events like exhibitions and shows will bring a crowd. These have their own ancillary revenue streams – anything from sponsorships and brand partnerships, to sales of prints and entry fees. Of course, only a few will be able to make a decent living from this, but such is the nature of such developments.

So back to the question at the beginning of this pair of essays: is photography dying? And if it is, is there any hope left? The non-simple answer is that photography as we know it is indeed gone and is not coming back. But the art of photography – why we still yearn to capture the essence and the soul of an object, a person or an event visually – still remains. How we do it is evolving faster than is comfortable for most of us. But in the end, human beings will always be wowed by how they and their world are depicted. And that will not change.