3 ms·

It's best to just think of it as a different art form. B&W film photography + darkroom printing is an art form, as is digital photography + photoshop. These mo

It's best to just think of it as a different art form. B&W film photography + darkroom printing is an art form, as is digital photography + photoshop. These modern AI assisted digital photography methods are another art form, one with less control left to the photographer, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I wouldn't want to say which is better, it's not really an axis that you can use to compare art is it? At the end of the day, do you generate an image which communicates something that the photographer had in mind at the time? If so, success!

TeMPOraL 3y ago
The mistake is in thinking photography is only, or even primarily, art. It's also measurement. A recorded observation of reality. People use their cameras - especially phone cameras - for both these purposes, and often which one is needed is determined after the fact. So e.g. I might appreciate the camera touching up my selfie for the Instagram post today, but if tomorrow I discover a rash on my face and I want to figure out how long it was developing, discovering that all my recent selfies have been automatically beautified would really annoy me. Or, you know, just try being a normal person and make a photo of your kid's rash to mail/MMS to a doctor, because it's a middle of a fucking pandemic, your pediatrician is only available over the phone, and now the camera plain refuses to make a clear picture of the skin condition, because it knows better. I'm also reminiscing about that Xerox fiasco, with copy machines that altered numbers on copied documents due some over-eager post-processing. I guess we'll need to repeat that with photos of utility meters, device serial numbers, and even scans of documents (which everyone does with their phone camera today) having their numbers computationally altered to "look better". EDIT: Between this and e.g. Apple's over-eager, globally-enabled autocorrect at some point auto-incorrecting drug names in medical documents written by doctors, people are going to get killed by this bullshit, before we get clear indication and control over those "magic" features.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

The mistake is in thinking photography is only, or even primarily, art. It's also measurement. A recorded observation of reality. People use their cameras - especially phone cameras - for both these purposes, and often which one is needed is determined after the fact. So e.g. I might appreciate the camera touching up my selfie for the Instagram post today, but if tomorrow I discover a rash on my face and I want to figure out how long it was developing, discovering that all my recent selfies have been automatically beautified would really annoy me. Or, you know, just try being a normal person and make a photo of your kid's rash to mail/MMS to a doctor, because it's a middle of a fucking pandemic, your pediatrician is only available over the phone, and now the camera plain refuses to make a clear picture of the skin condition, because it knows better. I'm also reminiscing about that Xerox fiasco, with copy machines that altered numbers on copied documents due some over-eager post-processing. I guess we'll need to repeat that with photos of utility meters, device serial numbers, and even scans of documents (which everyone does with their phone camera today) having their numbers computationally altered to "look better". EDIT: Between this and e.g. Apple's over-eager, globally-enabled autocorrect at some point auto-incorrecting drug names in medical documents written by doctors, people are going to get killed by this bullshit, before we get clear indication and control over those "magic" features.