Stand out.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Find your voice.
What do you want to share?
Stand tall.
Put your talents in the best light.
Speak clearly.
Focus on what is most important, in life as with photography.
Hire well.
Benefit from experience.
some footnotes
A note on AI transparency
Preamble:
When it comes down to creativity, I believe more in process than outcomes. When I am with my camera I am always asking questions. When shooting commercial work there is a tension between being a student of photography and meeting the brief. It is clear that the language we use affects how we think. In a photographic context this is about how we look at things, our visual language and gaze. The problem with AI is that it is very hard to write a query that reflects our decades of experiences in art galleries or those cultural influences that shape how we see.
Do I use AI in my process?
I do.
How is AI useful?
This might sound strange because so much AI is derivate and devoid of ‘soul’; the structure of images created in AI can be inspiration, and I can take that to breathe something different into what I look at through the camera. I’ve also used AI tools to critique and categorise my own photos in much the same way as you can use AI to conduct a linguistic analysis of writing.
Within certain limits, though
No images presented on this page have been retouched in any software or modified through AI. There is no ‘trickery’, just the way that light was focussed onto film or a sensor. Where software has been used on this site it will be noted.
Finally, on the subject of what it means to create
The divorce between the work I have produced with AI versus without it has little to do with the difference between art and artifice; I have produced plenty of commercial art with conventional techniques even while quoting others' art. The AI work put simply, does not astonish. It has no real feeling. And while it can serve an illustrative purpose it is cold at heart. For this reason I will never trust in it and while I am committed to 'moving with the times' and that may mean becoming better at writing queries I will not adopt AI tools to create artwork in the strict sense because the purpose of art is to say something about the human condition. AI can only show us a reality as if seen reflected in a fun-house mirror. It is an abstraction that has no soul - like the sounds coming from a music box that might remind us of when we heard a song played by a musician.
reference for further reading on this topic:
JF Martel 'Reclaiming art in the age of artifice'
On Technology and creative limits
The image of the butterfly at the top of this page was shot on a very tight budget. The camera was a Minolta X-300 shooting on slide film with the 50mm lens held by hand back-to-front against the camera. The film was then wrapped in foil and heated gently in the oven. Finally the slide film was used to create prints as though it was negative film. You could say that the two things you don’t want to see is the making of saussages or laws. Well, had you seen me, quite literally, lying in the gutter, with my face inches away from the detritus there you might have concluded that I was suffering some catastrophe. What I was doing is asking peculiar questions about images that led to a national award for editorial photography. Sometimes I have creative anxiety, but I didn’t on the day I shot the butterfly. I was both in the gutter and in a state of bliss. The creative process was shaped by limited finances using the technology that I had to hand, not wishing that anything was different. That moment iun the gutter was fleeting but the lessons I learned have influenced my work for decades.
There is one last thing that I learned from the trip to the gutter. The gutter was just outside of my house. You don’t have to travel to some far-flung place in order to open your eyes and see something remarkable. You can see something remarkable right where you are right now. What photography has given me is the ability to see the world through a range of lenses and filters.