3 ms·

So many comments here are casual dismissals of the photographer’s style, and while I generally prefer a lighter touch in post-processing, there are some incredi

So many comments here are casual dismissals of the photographer’s style, and while I generally prefer a lighter touch in post-processing, there are some incredibly cool photos in here, some of which are products of interesting light and canopy effects. I think the artistic decisions make some sense when you consider the purpose of a photo shoot like this. These photos are meant to communicate a story about a mysterious spy plane, and to appeal to a broad audience. For better or worse, people absolutely eat up this art style, which is why I think many here have been conditioned to associate it with cheap digital filters so ubiquitous on social media. Photos of a famous spy plane can’t be seen as less cool than the latest movie franchise, and so I suspect that’s why the military chose to work with a photographer who works in this style. Again, not my first choice, but there’s plenty to appreciate in the work, and some of those photos are not as manipulated as one might suspect, and are products of a camera capable of gathering a ton of light even at low exposures.

tivert 3y ago
> So many comments here are casual dismissals of the photographer’s style, and while I generally prefer a lighter touch in post-processing, there are some incredibly cool photos in here. I kind of feel bad of the photographer, but I think his style has is probably collateral damage of generative "AI." I literally did not believe his photos were real, because the uncanniness and the subject matter just screamed AI-generated to me. Especially that photo of the pilots in the space suits. A lot of the night shots of the plane also looked like renders. It's almost like it's too easy to fake cool, which then devalues cool, so to be believable someone an artist almost has to miss the mark in just the right way. There's probably a deeper point there, but I can't make it.
bmer 3y ago
I would not have guessed that this is a particular post-processing style (I no nothing about photography); my first impression was that some of the pictures were either AI generated (the general aesthetic is quite common in AI generated pictures), or 3D renders. Are there good explanations for why AI generated pictures tend to emulate this particular post-processing style? Is it a simple matter of choice of training data, or does it have to do with the "unnatural smoothness patterns" of the generated (or in the article's case, post-processed) image? Apart from that, I find it quite surprising that this is the first photoshoot. Isn't U2, first and foremost, a high altitude photography platform? Sure, they probably mostly cared about photographing the surface of the planet, and perhaps the plane's (fixed) equipment was even such that it could only photograph the surface. But did no one pilot, co-pilot, etc. ever care to try and take pictures with even a humble consumer camera in a U2? Finally: could the post-processing style have been chosen on purpose to hide details which are (for whatever reason) still "sensitive information"?
localplume 3y ago
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tivert 3y ago

> So many comments here are casual dismissals of the photographer’s style, and while I generally prefer a lighter touch in post-processing, there are some incredibly cool photos in here. I kind of feel bad of the photographer, but I think his style has is probably collateral damage of generative "AI." I literally did not believe his photos were real, because the uncanniness and the subject matter just screamed AI-generated to me. Especially that photo of the pilots in the space suits. A lot of the night shots of the plane also looked like renders. It's almost like it's too easy to fake cool, which then devalues cool, so to be believable someone an artist almost has to miss the mark in just the right way. There's probably a deeper point there, but I can't make it.

bmer 3y ago

I would not have guessed that this is a particular post-processing style (I no nothing about photography); my first impression was that some of the pictures were either AI generated (the general aesthetic is quite common in AI generated pictures), or 3D renders. Are there good explanations for why AI generated pictures tend to emulate this particular post-processing style? Is it a simple matter of choice of training data, or does it have to do with the "unnatural smoothness patterns" of the generated (or in the article's case, post-processed) image? Apart from that, I find it quite surprising that this is the first photoshoot. Isn't U2, first and foremost, a high altitude photography platform? Sure, they probably mostly cared about photographing the surface of the planet, and perhaps the plane's (fixed) equipment was even such that it could only photograph the surface. But did no one pilot, co-pilot, etc. ever care to try and take pictures with even a humble consumer camera in a U2? Finally: could the post-processing style have been chosen on purpose to hide details which are (for whatever reason) still "sensitive information"?

localplume 3y ago

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