Is AI PHOTOGRAPHY going to replace you?

Hello everyone, welcome to my photography Q&A. I'm going to answer some of your questions that popped up in the comment sections on my YouTube videos. So let's just get straight into it. Richard Black says, with the 5D Classic, when you talk about how the files look, are you referring to the JPEGs or the RAW files? I'm always talking about RAW files unless I say JPEGs. I'm always talking about RAW files. But I have, but look, the thing that, the reason I picked up this question was because of the point I want to make about it. If you like JPEGs that come out of the camera, I'll tell you the camera that I really like the JPEGs from is the 5D Mark II. They're really nice and I'm going to do something on that. I'm going to do a shoot with the 5D Mark II where it's just the JPEGs from the camera, but you don't need to now do the JPEGs. If you want to do that, if you like what you get from the JPEGs and you're happy to, just do it. All this kind of like, oh professional photographers only shoot RAW. This is just not true. As I know it's not true. This thing that you have to shoot RAW so you get all of the information. Don't let the camera decide for you. Do whatever you like. If you like what you're getting, carry on. Don't let people influence you too strongly, at all even. Make your own decisions. Be your own person. You don't have to justify anything that you do to anyone. All you need to do is be happy with the results that you're getting and if someone says to you, you can't shoot JPEG. You have to shoot in RAW. No, that's you. Don't let other people dictate to you based on their belief system what you have to do and what you should do. Use your brain. Make up your own mind. Say, I like the results that I'm getting with whatever I'm doing and be yourself. This is one of the things I want to try to bring into this kind of group that is my subscribers on YouTube I guess, is that whilst I tell you the things that I like, I want to encourage you that if let's say that I did a meetup one day, I would love it if people didn't copy the cameras that I use. If they just bring the things that they like and shoot the way that they want to. I'd love to see cameras from every description, someone shooting on film, all different brands of like digital and things, where anyone wants the latest gear, the latest and greatest all the way down to an iPhone or whatever they want in between. I would love to see everyone turning up with different gear like that, shooting however they want, with whatever lenses they want and being present for this experience of doing photography. When I list these cameras out to you and how I feel about them, you need to understand that this is how I feel and what I want to encourage all of you to do is find the things that you like because if I turn around and say that there's one camera, I can give you a perfect example. I don't like the files that come out of the D810. I just don't like them. It's a brilliant camera. I just don't like what comes out of it that much. I know photographers that use the D810 and I like their work but when I've used it, I'm just like I'm fighting against it. So it's not good for me. That's not a good choice for me. But if I did that photo walk, like I said, I wouldn't want someone who owns a D810 who can't go with a D810 who doesn't like a D810. No. Be you. Be yourself. Come along. Join in. Be the person that brings that camera along because you like it. I'm not going to go D810. Do you know what I mean? This is what I'm talking about being inclusive. I want to try to nurture a little community or a mindset of people that think for themselves and do the things the way they want to do them. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. Do it your way. That's what I want to encourage everyone to do is to be true to yourself and be yourself. Even when I'm telling you these things, don't be so heavily influenced. Think for yourselves and make your own minds up about how you want to do things. I know that's a tangent from the question but when I read the question, this is what went through my mind. That's why I wanted to answer it because it triggers that in me when you guys ask me certain questions. I can feel people constantly, there's a number of questions I get that people want guidance. They want to make sure they make the right decision. It's okay to try something out and say no that's not for me and then switch and then try something else out until you find it. The reason I'm able to review so many of these cameras for you, these older cameras, is because this is what happened to me. I was like I want to try that out. I want to see what it's like and you switch and you change and you sort of flip-flop backwards and forwards trying things out. That's an enjoyable experience in itself. I like going through that process and I've enjoyed going through it and I've kept my base system so most of my work, especially my wedding photography, the bulk of it was shot on a D600 so I know that camera exceedingly well. I try out other cameras and sometimes I think I prefer the 6D. I prefer the 6D for portraits though when I'm in control so I'll have that with a couple of lenses. That's how I do things and then something else comes along and like the D810, I'll try it out, I'll buy it, I'll keep it back to my D600. That's how I kind of work so like even now I'm trying out the Sony a7r5 and I'm making up my mind on it. I'm thinking is that something that could take over as a work camera? Is it maybe and I'll try something else out and rather than this kind of yeah I'm gonna buy this and then everyone will know that I bought this camera and I'm the best and you know all this kind of rubbish and I will attach all of my identity as a photographer to this camera. These are just things that we use and we think like yeah I like this one, this is good, this suits me. I tried that one out but it's just you know it's not for me but then you don't sort of, what I see everyone doing on YouTube is go ah you bought that, it's rubbish because they didn't like it. That doesn't mean it's not good for somebody else because all the people that always do that have never got any work, never see their portfolio, no never see their portfolio and I think that's the point isn't it? It's like if you go up to someone tell them they're you know you think their camera's rubbish first like that reflects more on you than it does on them and second thing is like where's your work? You don't know that guy might smoke you, good girl, you know they might absolutely smoke you and you're just like oh yeah the camera your camera like your work, where's your work? That's the question on one of my landscape photography videos. How do you darken the camera so quickly? Ninja skills my friend, ninja skills. Two bar PSI that took me a moment because I was like reading it as two bar, see I don't know what does that mean it's not like a type of burp or something no but it's two bar PSI isn't it that's okay I get it and you comment a lot on my stuff so I should have realized that by now. Can you recommend either 5d mark 2 or 5d mark 4 for photography use only mainly portraits landscapes and cars? Are the cars moving or not? If here's what I'd say I'd go for the 5d mark 2 because the color's nicer on it even though it's worse in every other way. Okay so right here's the thing if I took pictures on the 5d mark 4 and the 5d mark 2 and I did my very best with them and I presented you those pictures afterwards stuck them in front of you and asked them to put them into piles of which ones you prefer I would bet a little bit of money I don't like betting but just a tiny bit that you would put a vast majority of the 5d mark 2 pictures into the pile that you like because I know those pictures are going to look better despite the canon 5d mark 4 being better at everything else it's just that the 5d mark 2 just somehow looks better and the last question actually came via an email and the question was about AI because everyone's talking about this at the moment do I think that AI is going to replace photographers in photography so I've been thinking about this a little bit because I've seen people putting up videos about it as well and you know what I thought about this and I thought right when I look and see what AI is doing it's not very good at doing consistent things it can't like take a scene and replicate it very well several times over but I think that will come in time so all of the things that are unique like a wedding I think that AI is virtually going to be useless for it it will have big benefits in the editing process of speeding up the edits it's already doing that now really you see people now selling AI generated art so I'm going to mention two things I think it's going to change and one I think will be benefit photographers and the other one a bit negative I think in commercial photography I think a lot of commercial photographers will probably lose their jobs in time not yet because the stuff is not good enough yet I think in time they will because the problem for commercial work and I do commercial work myself but the problem for commercial work is most of it requires you to repeat a look that you can do and there will come a point where you can just get AI to do that and replicate it and I think where commercial photographers fall down is that they think that they're really artistic and they've got an artistic vision but what they're producing is mostly just generic nonsense and I'm afraid that's the reality of it it's just like this if you look at the adverts that are out it's like that works as an advert and that's why you're getting paid for it but in terms of creativity and mindset it's pretty low down in terms of like you're getting paid because you can make that look but the creativity level in a lot of the adverts is not that high it works because of the design idea behind it and once you can feed those design ideas into an AI algorithm if you like and give it a good description and then say we need to see 20 variations you pick the one you like then you say right I wanted to you know have it in this scene that's in that scene and you can do it it's going to be very quick for companies to do things in-house I think that's where it's going to go I just can't see that there's going to be I mean I'm not saying all commercial photography will go but what I'm saying is I think that I don't think with the commercial photographers that I know I don't think they understand how creatively limited they are but because they because their stuff's getting paid for um and commercial can pay quite well they think that means they're a good photographer and that they're creative and it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm afraid it doesn't really work like that because a lot of the photography is a good advert and that's why it's getting paid for that doesn't mean it's good photography that makes sense because outside of selling the product that's in the picture or the service that's not going to be of interest to anyone else and so it's a advertising photography like that commercial photography is like a something that influences you to buy something it doesn't necessarily mean that it's good photography I would give you analogies to things that are out there that people buy like for instance newspapers there's a lot of bad newspapers and regardless of any political is there's a lot of bad newspapers out there and people still buy them in large numbers because it appeals to them but it doesn't mean that what's written in them is any good same thing with like fast food places there's lots of them everywhere and they can repeat that that burger if you like across the world but and people buy loads of it and it's a good business for them but it doesn't mean it's a good product so I'm saying so I think that for commercial photography it could be days are numbered for a lot of people because once they can do this in-house and generate adverts faster I think they'll be away with that and they'll want to do that I might be wrong I don't know you know who knows um but the flip side I think where things are going to get interesting is that trying to cast my mind back to Blade Runner when there's no is it there's no pets left everything's synthetic that right and imagine like you have a real insect versus a synthetic one suddenly someone like let's say the vast majority of the planet's animals are all synthetic they're robots essentially that are completely lifelike but then someone finds an animal somewhere that's still alive that's real that thing's worth a fortune because it's real it's not synthetic and I my prediction is that art will go in the same direction I think what you'll see is that the artistic side of photography for instance in landscape photography there will be a need and a desire and the same thing for portraits as well for the people who will say this is a real person not an AI generated one but in the artistic side of things let's say street photography landscape and so on um the the fact that this is real real life depicted no I'm not talking about documentary it could still be stylus and stuff but the fact that it's not generated by a computer will make things worth more so I think it will go the opposite direction to what a lot of people are thinking is that they will want to see they will want to know who the artist is and know that this is an authentic picture made by a human being we might get to the point where AI is really good at replicating it and that doesn't even matter either I don't think because let's say you put in all the work of Cartier-Bresson into an AI algorithm and then it generates more work that looks just like what Cartier-Bresson would shoot but it isn't actually his those pictures aren't going to be worth as much as the actual pictures that Cartier-Bresson took because they're generated by an algorithm not by human and I think that the thing that's going to change is we're going to start to see some form of authenticity attached to work and that might be in the form of some sort of digital footprint that is attached to files where we can see that this comes from a real person but it may be in the meantime before that becomes advanced enough or is even a thing and I just made that up but that would be the way I think it would go there will be a time period where people will want to see some evidence of behind the scenes for instance if you sell landscape photos there will be a time I think where having some video footage of you being there and taking the picture will give the authenticity to it because I don't think that many people want to pay much money for something that's been generated by a computer versus the story of photographer you know let's say they go hiking for five days camp out somewhere waiting for that perfect moment and they capture it and they produce this print and then they sell a limited number of prints from it that's going to be worth so much more than the AI generated copies of that print or variations that it will make afterwards and the reason is it's not that AI versions aren't going to be just as good it's just that we as humans aren't going to value it we're not going to see the value in that and we won't want it and because we won't want it it's not going to be the thing it's like if you have let me give you an example if you have two books and one of them's a first edition signed by the author that one is going to be worth way more than print run 5000 whatever not signed that's the difference and because people will want to have an original they will want to have like you know the equivalent of an original and that's what it's going to boil down to so I think it's actually going to enhance in time I think it will enhance the value of stuff that we create I don't think photography is going anywhere it's just simply because people don't want AI to take over in that way therefore it won't do it because people won't place value on AI created stuff and that is where the buck stops if people don't place value on AI created work then you're not going to see people wanting to pay for it and I think that that's why I think commercial photography is in danger is people don't value that work outside of its ability to sell the product and because of that that's why I think AI is a real danger to commercial it makes sense if you like that and you enjoyed it consider buying me a coffee in the link in the description down below every time someone buys me a coffee is really much appreciated and it helps support the channel keep things like this going if you're new here consider subscribing give me a thumbs up if you liked it and drop me a comment down below I will see you again in the next video take care bye-bye