AI, the Wild Card: Bringing Your Imagination to Life
By Olaf Willoughby
Olaf Willoughby is a London-based photographer, writer, educator, and cofounder of The Leica Meet, a photo group with more than 18,000 members. Find him on @ola1f on Instagram.
To many photographers, AI is shrouded in fog. While developers and the technical media stampede into higher profile text and video outputs, AI-produced still photography is mostly stuck in time, reproducing the same images of poodles floating in space eating doughnuts. Despite a wide range of AI feature innovations, still photography doesn’t attract the media coverage it deserves.
I urge you to dig into AI, clear the mist and find the benefits. There are, of course, limits and potential drawbacks to incorporating AI into your photography practice. I’ll start with the positive options for creating and enhancing images, move on to the challenges posed by AI before finally achieving clarity (hopefully). I aim to show how AI takes you from your imagination to an image, unlocking new creative inspiration. Like a wild card, AI can be unpredictable, disruptive and chock-full of potential.
The pros of AI image creation
AI as a catalyst. AI is moving at warp speed across the entire digital art industry. Let's explore how it can enhance your image creation workflow, from igniting the spark of an idea to the final polished product.
Ideation and Concept Development. Imagine a tireless collaborator generating unique project ideas at the speed of thought. Using AI for brainstorming can introduce unexpected elements and themes and, inspire your thoughts.
Gone are the days of painstakingly assembling visual references. AI can now create mood boards based on simple text prompts pre-visualizing toning options and color palettes. AI is not constrained by convention. Frequently it will create novel designs. See below where it chose to show the landscape as a triptych in which the base of the two vertical dividing lines fades into the image. A traditional approach would rarely divide or fade the image in this way.
Example of how AI can generate a surprising landscape image introducing the triptych layout which was not even part of the prompt.
Style Transfer. Use this tool when you know the final ‘look.’ The LLM can be trained to recognize the visual characteristics of your portfolio of images and apply that style to another single/batch of image(s).
The training group of my images from Antarctica
The Antarctic portfolio style applied to a prompt asking AI to transfer that style to images of a gown suitable for a Met Gala event
Hybrid AI/photography workflow. Want to revitalize your photography? Use AI to generate intriguing ideas, then use your traditional camera to bring those ideas to life. It’s a balance between innovation and authenticity.
Another option is to overlay AI images on those shot with your camera and combine them, ideally using Blend Modes/Opacity in your retouching software.
In the future, AI could expand to offer advice on location scouting, narrative development, prop suggestions, model poses, and even composition.
Originality. As photographers, we often need to create images we don’t have in our libraries. I created this as a cover image for my article “Mountains & Meaning.”
The article theme described how the challenge of climbing a mountain leaves the physical behind as we confront the metaphysical world of meaning.
How I incorporate AI into my workflow. I’m an unashamed experimentalist. I believe that life is too short to settle on one creative style. Any visual signature I have is an accident of my perspective; it’s not intentional. I’m attracted to possibilities, so I enjoy working with AI. Let’s take prompting as an example. The common belief is that initial visual prompts should be a detailed description of the image you have in mind, and that further prompt iterations will become increasingly prescriptive to develop the final image.
But I’ve experimented with a counter intuitive view yielding interesting results. I find it faintly funny and egotistical to sit at my keyboard, spelling out what AI must create. It has billions of data points in its memory, I only have my comparatively ant-sized brain. Surely it can concoct visionary images to stimulate my thinking?
Why shouldn’t AI prompt me?
Sometimes this works well. Sometimes it falls flat on its face. But the lesson is to keep experimenting. Both images below show AI can have a surprising sense of design. The use of an unevenly spaced diptych and triptych, the odd camera angle below and behind the ear, the unusual lateral top and bottom vignetting are all typical of the ways AI can inspire us to think differently.
The writing model of AI, which frequently advises the user to write increasingly complex prompts, doesn't always apply to photography. Sometimes less is more.
Large Language Models (LLMs) can produce vastly different results. Experiment with various platforms and models until you achieve the outcome you want.
The prompt here was simply the title of my workshop, Visualise ‘Transcendent Photography’. A short prompt created an intriguing design.
The short prompt here was, Visualize ‘The emotion of being lost’. Again, an unlikely image. A catalyst for further thought.
Additionally, AI can be a powerful research collaborator, gathering visuals/data and identifying key historical, cultural, or industry insights.
Image enhancement
AI as a collaborator. In the image enhancement workflow, AI can elevate your images from good to extraordinary. Let's examine the benefits of partnering with AI.
An AI-created landscape combined with old image of early settlers in that territory
Fine-tuning. Imagine a retouching assistant ready to refine your images. AI can automate a range of existing features; e.g. exposure adjustment and noise reduction, etc. It also adds new options; e.g. background/subject replacement or erasure, inpainting, outpainting, upsizing, targeted area color corrections (skies, skin tone, clothing colors).
These changes can be executed by AI or manually, stretching creative options and saving photographers time and effort. Developments here are rapid and new features appear regularly in the leading brands of editing software.
Tasks that once took hours, like tagging, sorting, ranking, labelling, and culling, are now done in moments. AI can reduce the time taken to both capture and process images.
Reaching your consumer. In today's digital age, creating stunning images is only half the battle. Sharing them effectively is equally crucial. Here, AI steps in as your marketing guru, generating compelling copy for social media captions, headlines, and tweets, showcasing your images.
Integrity. The key to success with AI lies in maintaining your artistic integrity. It's a great tool for divergent thinking, but converge on ideas that resonate with your soul. Be transparent about AI's role in your process, giving credit where it's due.
AI can be a catalyst and collaborator. It amplifies your creativity, streamlines your workflow, and helps your visual stories reach a wider audience.
The controversy
AI may offer benefits, but it’s also entangled in controversy.
Quality. The purist suggests, “It’s not photography, it doesn’t involve a camera or a lens. It threatens to partly replace it with low-grade ‘perfectly plastic’ images. End of story.”
The experimentalist on the other hand, claims, “My prompt uses my creativity to generate my image. I’m not concerned with camera gear or process. Only the quality of the final result.” Admittedly, these views are from emotional extremes, with the middle ground occupied by many creatives and hobbyists with little experience of AI. Both points of view are legitimate and illustrate the disruptive capacity of innovation.
In the 19th century, people saw art as depicting the world on canvas until photography disrupted that view. In 1839, French painter Paul Delaroche declared, “From today, painting is dead,” and English artist J.M.W. Turner said, “This is the end of Art. I’m glad I had my day.” Of course, painting didn’t disappear. As photographs better represented reality, painting adapted and thrived with new subjective styles like Impressionism and Cubism. History often repeats itself.
Socrates, speaking as King Thamus, says of writing: “This invention, O king, will produce forgetfulness in those who use it, because they won’t practice their memory.” This was in 370 BCE. That debate over 2,000 years ago, about oral and written cultures, mirrored the position of AI in photography today.
A current example would be the impact of digital on film photography. The moral is to accept AI as part of a new reality, try it, and see how it works for us.
Authenticity. Between the extremes, there’s a rational controversy. How do we, as artists, maintain our authenticity amid accusations that AI, by scraping data from the internet, effectively steals our work? This leads to issues of originality, copyright, and compensation.
The arguments here are multifaceted. Companies creating LLMs claim their use of internet data falls under fair use in copyright law and that the information is transformed into something new, like human artists building on others’ work. There’s also debate on whether web-published work is in the public domain and the benefit of AI providing new tools for artistic creation.
Critics believe their artworks have been used without permission, leading to a loss of copyright control, attribution, and income. Ethical concerns arise about fair use of the artists' work without compensation.
Meanwhile, industry discussions are on using the blockchain for tracking artistic works, AI tools for plagiarism detection, and a digital stamp to identify AI-created works.
This situation is complex and ambiguous. AI has thundered into an unprepared marketplace like a bull in a china shop, it will take years to sort through the repercussions for the legal and ethical frameworks.
Surely artists should be able to opt out of having their work used to train LLMs? However, this is equally complex. Early debates are taking place on opting out but few options exist for widespread adoption. Eventually, opt-out registries, licensing agreements, legal changes, and collaborative groups for responsible AI will provide artists with more control, but the timing is uncertain.
Democratization. If we see a picture of people at the beach, how do we know if some individuals and objects have been erased or replaced? In allowing more people to express themselves visually, AI raises questions of authenticity and its importance.
Just as digital music led to a small counter trend in long playing records, AI could lead to an appreciation for human-created images with authenticity stamps.
Soon, I believe that AI will replicate professional techniques that took years to master, such as lighting, composition, and post-processing. Many commercial photographers will need to adopt a hybrid working style combining traditional and AI approaches to remain competitive.
Perhaps AI may shift the focus for professionals from technical skills to conceptual creativity, which will remain valuable. It’s too early in AI’s lifecycle to forecast clear trends, but buyers can expect cheaper, faster, more accessible images. It could change how the public enjoys art. Today’s ‘immersive’ art exhibitions are the first steps into AI-generated installations and interactive experiences becoming widespread as artists find new ways to share their works.
Keeping it real
The limitations of AI for photographers. Every innovation has benefits and limitations—even AI. Let’s explore five drawbacks:
“Feel”: Some argue that for true photographers, nothing compares to the delight (struggle) of trekking to a mesmerizing location with a rucksack full of camera gear, composing the “perfect” picture and gently pressing the shutter button. There’s nothing like it, that soft click of satisfaction. Certainly not the easy pleasure of sipping a coffee, seated in front of your computer clacking on a keyboard. This sounds fanciful but the experience difference is vast. The camera has a physicality that allows the photographer to be present with the work. A sensation which may include the Hero’s journey of traveling to far-off destinations to shoot. The computer, on the other hand, is a mediator between the photographer and the subject. AI may require mental work, but for many it doesn’t match the sensory appeal of traditional photography.
“Live events”: These are a real-world example where many photographers won’t use AI because they need to capture images on the spot, at the moment the action occurs. They include weddings, baby, pet, sports, music, street, documentary, and photojournalism (war, flood, disease). For the foreseeable future, there are no options other than using traditional cameras on these occasions.
Image quality: Commercial and fine art photographers often have specific technical image requirements not available with AI. They need large file sizes for prints, exhibitions, posters, and magazines, requiring cameras with larger sensors to record fine detail, and professional printers who understand sharpness, shadow detail, and color rendition. AI software offering upsizing closes this gap but professional print solutions are preferred for premium quality work.
Personal preference: Some enjoy using a camera as a tool, learning how it renders different subjects and lighting is a prime motivation. A computer is mainly for “work.” Others enjoy crafting their images through prompting AI, repeating the generation loop, and doing a little retouching. This isn’t a learning curve issue. If you can learn shutter speed, aperture, and ISO settings, then working with AI is no more difficult. The choice is centered around preferences and comfort levels, both perspectives are reasonable.
Trust. Current concerns over the ethics and legality of internet-scraped images may affect photographers and their clients. Some wish to preserve the human touch, feeling AI creations look plastic or unnatural. This will deter overnight adoption and take time to establish widespread trust.
Conclusion
AI certainly isn’t a “magic bullet” or a final answer to photographers’ concerns, but it represents a major technical leap forward. It’s already here and will only get better, faster, cheaper, and more integrated into the photographic process.
Treat AI as a catalyst, co-creator, and collaborator. It doesn't tire or become temperamental and can even serve as a mentor. As Picasso said, "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction." AI may be disruptive, but it is still a tool, one among many. The essence of photography remains the same—capturing inspiring moments and telling engaging stories.
The AI revolution in visual creativity isn’t about replacing cameras and lenses. It’s about using your mind’s eye. Combining tradition and technology can propel our creative workflow, our images and our imaginations into the future.
Dive in, experiment boldly! Step into the future of visual storytelling and bring your imagination to life.
All images in this article are created by Olaf Willoughby. They are sourced from various LLMs, some are composites made with other AI images or shot with a digital camera. © Olaf Willoughby