Is photography dying?
It’s been an interesting few weeks so I thought I would share some thoughts with you. Why has it been interesting? Well, maybe interesting is not quite the right adjective. Traumatic maybe? Disconcerting, definitely.
Firstly, although lastly chronologically, I have planned, shot and scheduled for release a vlog in just 5 days. Usually it takes me a shoot, a bit of time in my office adding bits, a day to put the vlog together and I then have a bank of about 4 vlogs which I like to keep scheduled in case life gets in the way. So to have one shot and published in 5 days is unusual. But this week, life has got in the way and then out of the way again.
On Monday, I had the horrible job of putting our ageing cocker spaniel Archie to sleep. He was 15 years old, had a big growth in his mouth, he was drinking loads and was incontinent. His back legs were failing him and he was struggling so it was definitely for the best, but wow was it tough?! I made the call on Friday and booked him in for Monday as my wife was away at the weekend and we needed to think about our autistic daughter who we’d been trying to prepare for a while. Despite explaining in quite brutal terms she just didn’t seem to be taking it in. She absolutely loves dogs, probably more than she loves us and it was going to be tough. All weekend I couldn’t look him or her in the eye, I felt terrible. When Monday eventually arrived and it was done I felt a mix of relief, sadness and, I suppose, proper grief. My daughter was absolutely inconsolable and, at the time of writing, remains tearful. But, and bear with me here, it has made things clearer with my photography.
Let me explain.
The following day I looked forward. What was I going to do? Archie’s passing had shown me all too clearly that life ends for all of us. All I had to comfort me was the memory of him, the joy he brought into our lives and the fact that, like all dogs, he held no grudges. He attacked every day the same as the last, loved me unconditionally no matter if I was happy, sad or grumpy. Every single day of his life he would get excited every time he saw his lead, even though lately he only got to the end of the drive before turning back. His lust for life and everything it offered was with him until his last breath. As I felt his heart fade in my hands it reminded me how precious life is and how important it is to embrace each day. When I changed my working week to two days teaching it was to enjoy life. So what did I do with those other three days? I went out and took photographs.
And why did I do that? Because it is something I love and always have. It started with film and moved into the digital age. My images are different today in lots of ways. I started honing my craft in a dark room and that evolved into Lightroom and Photoshop. I started learning to load different sorts of film cameras and backs and I’m now using a camera that produces images digitally that can be turned into film emulated images, monochrome or whatever I like. I have captured aerial images by using a camera that was on a telescopic mast and can now capture images from the air with my drone. I can produce HDR images, video using the same camera as I use for stills and technology has evolved more than I could imagine as a thirteen year old boy proudly loading film into his first SLR (a Zenith E). But the images are also the same in many ways too. I print my images, it’s just that now they are produced in the light from the digital darkroom and not from a dark room. My creative eye has developed but I still look back at the images I produced back in the day on film and appreciate them just as much. Photography is still fun and is a stress reliever for me.
Which brings me rather nicely onto the subject of this blog and the vlog that accompanies it on my Youtube channel this Sunday. Namely the so called death of photography. There have been rumblings in the photography world about the rise of AI. The text to image bots that can be found on the Midjourney discord servers, or the newly announced beta of Adobe Firefly. The rise of the robots has begun and some people are fearing them. At the moment the quality is not quite there, but it is steaming forever closer. Will they kill off the industry? Parts of it probably. Photo-libraries have already called time on stock photography in some areas. Selling an image for a few pence is not going to make anyone rich and being able to create your own images by simply writing text is going to help with that race to the bottom.
But… it’s not all doom and gloom. I remember similar mumblings with digital, electric cars, MTV, Spotify etc. What photographers can offer is control. We can interpret a brief much more creatively than a bot, we can problem solve, we can make things personal. There are going to be jobs created because of AI that no-one is even aware of at the moment, from the ashes new growth rises.
And one thing, the most important thing, will never be killed off by AI.
Namely the photographic process. Going out into the landscape to capture something quite unique, or even not quite so unique as exemplified in this weeks video. The pure enjoyment of photography, choosing your lens, your point of view, planning, waiting, timing, assessing, recreating and printing are things that I really love and many of you do too.
So Archies passing, although sad, has taught me, or rather reminded me of a valuable lesson. It’s summed up rather nicely in my WhatsApp profile (although by no means original). That is the phrase ‘Carpe Diem’ or ‘seize the day’. Horace knew what he was talking about even back in 23BC. Archie knew it, I knew it. Do not worry about the future for photography. It will remain strong but its shape may alter. But it will be there, unconditionally, ready for you to enjoy it.
Carpe Diem everyone.
