What is an AI-Free Photographer?

"In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way."

— Yoda

Everyone says they value authenticity, real relationships, real interactions.

Yet we then spend time and energy on things that are the opposite of these values: social media, fast food, cheap product knock-offs.

AI holds out immense hope of helping us save time and money on mundane tasks. But we need to be careful about what we delegate to the bots.

To be human is to be in relationship with other humans, to share in our human experience through the exchange of ideas.

Photography is an art form because it is a human-too-human interaction.

You can't create an authentic, interesting, real portrait of someone (or yourself) by uploading a bunch of selfies into an AI and asking it to spit back perfectly posed images. Because AI cannot feel, cannot connect. 

A portrait is a creative process, an interaction between a photographer and their subject that show's someone's unique spark, their charm, their person.

Simon Sinek posed this interesting thought experiment. Imagine you are struggling with your partner and don't know what to do. So you enter a prompt into ChatGPT and it spits back some advice about what to say in your sticky situation. And so you use those words with your partner. But your partner senses that these words don't sound like you. So they ask, "Did you get that from ChatGPT"? How do you think the rest of the interaction would go?

Humans will always prefer that which is more real, slightly flawed, yet truthful.

We, being humans, share that preference. And so  all our images are made by real humans, on real cameras, in the real world.

It is a benefit of working with us that our clients can always say, "Yes, that is the real me. I took the time to show up, interact, and engage in an act of creation that I could be proud of."