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I can still remember watching Steve Jobs make a big deal about Apple existing at the intersection of the Liberal Arts and Technology. It was a somewhat corny thing to say, for sure, but nevertheless I was always grateful that at least one technology company was trying to keep the engineers at arm's length. Photography is another discipline hanging out at the same intersection, and for a much longer time, too. Sometimes it seems like the art side is on a logarithmic trajectory while technology's path is exponential. Maybe I just need to rotate the image counterclockwise by ninety degrees...

Good light to you this weekend, fellow traveler.

Fake Fake Fake... Or?

Indifferent to them, hate 'em, or love 'em, I think it is worth investigating images generated by artificial intelligence. If only to impress upon yourself how fast things are changing. Which seems to be pretty fast, honestly, and the pace certainly will only pick up from here. So, a month ago I added my name to the DALL-E waitlist, and recently was allowed to sign up for an account. The first experiment I tried was to generate some fake Malevich, see above. 

Later, I tried some fake Cezanne, specifying a particular color palette.

The four variations make a nice little quartet, don't you think?

One of the photographers whose work first resonated with me when I was young is Aaron Siskind. I've always appreciated his expressionist photographs of textures, patterns, and the like. Here is some fake Siskind for your consideration.

To my eyes, the AI does a better job of faking the art of the famous and prominent, which makes sense, of course, as there are more examples online. The good news is that those of us toiling away in relative obscurity might be safe for a little while longer!

Long Live Ded Tech

To me, one of the defining characteristics of photography is that its practice is so intertwined with technology. Indeed, there is a well-respected history of photography textbook that uses innovations in technology as one of its main organizational principles. I think this relationship has much to do with why many photographers, myself included, collect cameras in some manner, and why we like to play around with old cameras from time to time. For example, today's image was made with about a hundred dollars worth of 'dead' technology. Dead this, dead that, cringe. Anyway, in this case, it is a teenaged Olympus E-500 digicam with a 35mm f/3.5 Olympus 4/3 macro lens mounted. Now, that is a combo you won't see very often on your Instagram feed.

Tasting notes: Olympus E-500, 35mm Macro, Photoshop.