I was excited when I first read John’s post on AI because it’s something I wanted to become familiar with–maybe not use fully, but become familiar with. Two things I didn’t count on were: 1. my technical inability and 2. catching the worst ever cold.

This cold has me with a fever and typical cold symptoms. So my lack of technical ability is made worse by my fuzzy thinking right now. But I’ll persist on.

I’ll admit to using AI when I take unwanted things out of a picture and doing a sky replacement. However, I found early on that I don’t have the artistic ability to do a sky replacement correctly, meaning the light source in the sky has to follow through to the ground.

I didn’t see any distinct lighting in this sky replacement so maybe I’m okay.

Lightroom Classic has just come out with some new AI features like Content Aware. So I figured how could I miss with my favorite LR. My goal was to take out the bush to the right of the swan and increase the water in the lake. But, I ended up with three swans a swimming. I don’t know how that happened. I was really too sick at the time to figure it out.

Then I heard that WordPress would do AI when given a prompt. So for my first prompt I asked for a swan in a lake just showing the lake. My second prompt was for a lighthouse just showing the cliffs and wildflowers. AI wasn’t listening too well.

You can’t say I didn’t try! I’m not too fond of AI beyond simple edits. After all the great photographers dodged and burned their way into producing amazing images. But when you can create full images just on a simple command, I don’t think that’s entirely right. If you do use AI beyond simple edits, please say so. You don’t have to worry about me doing that; I haven’t really figured out how. I don’t think I want to.

If you haven’t responded to John’s challenge yet, please link to his post and use the Len-Artists tag. I enjoyed seeing all your beautiful floral post last week and look forward to seeing what Donna has in store for us tomorrow.

Take care everyone and stay away from this cold!

54 thoughts on “Lens Artists Challenge #302: Artificial Intelligence and Photography”

  2. Anne, I hope you’re feeling well. The experiments you created were beautiful. Your swans at the lake and the lighthouse, for example, are wonderful. I did not see any problems with your sky replacement in the first set. It looked real to me. Very nice post and beautiful images!

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    1. Oh boy, Margaret do you have it right! AI is too much for me. At least it will keep me honest! Hopefully, I’m on the mend. I think the fever broke this morning.

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  5. Being sick with a cold and dealing with AI generation or editing is a daunting task, Anne! Both your AI-gen images look nice, but your lens would do a better job. I saw too many fake northern lights superimposed into images that couldn’t have possibly seen the lights last month.

    When I think of something being “photoshopped,” that is the negative image I see. Most photographers have a natural and artistic eye for capturing beautiful and compelling images without AI enhancement. AI-generated images can be fun if used sparingly and with a note (I made a special watermark for any AI-generated images I create).

    Sky replacement that is real, or moving bushes out of the lake is fine, if it enhances the composition. Yours looked natural! Like I commented on another post, I’d rather use my own A (artistic) eye rather than AI, LOL! Hope you feel better!

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  8. Good to know that you are on the mend, Anne. The AI part – yes, it is tricky today but looking at the speed of developments in technology, may be one day we can connect a chip to our heads and the computer would reproduce on screen what we are thinking!

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    1. I am feeling better and hope to be back to normal activity in a couple of days. Your thoughts are exactly why I’m afraid of AI. We’ve given up our autonomy to having GPS devices track us, cell phones give out our coordinates and Alexa know what’s happening in our homes (if not yet, soon). If you were raised in the ’50s, what’s happening now is scary.

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  10. I hope you feel back to normal soon, Anne! So often AI is less than stellar in generating what we see in our mind when we write a phrase. I guess AI is no better at reading minds, even with hints, as I am. >grin<

    Seriously, one thing I’ve found is that AI apps try to find repeating patterns near the items we want removed. Sometimes that works, but sometimes it’s not too successful. >grin<

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    1. John, I truly appreciated your challenge. It was a great exercise and helped me realize that I’ll have a simple and limited association with AI. If we want to use AI, we have to learn how to communicate with a machine! This whole thing is so interesting.

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  11. I’m sorry to hear about your cold – you’ve done well to join in at all given how rough you’ve been feeling! I’m with you in my views on AI – use it to tweak an image by all means, but if you create one from scratch or make significant changes to your shot, then you should say so.

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    1. Thanks Sarah! I’m feeling better now and the cold is almost gone. Most of us have the same opinion regarding AI. I think our photography should remain an expression of what we saw or felt, and that expression should come through our lens and not the computer.

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  15. Keep getting better! Fantastic effort! The swans were fantastic even though AI didn’t listen very well. I agree with you, Anne. It is nice to learn and be up on what is up and coming, but ya…it isn’t really photography. I am extremely impressed with what you put together with being sick.

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  16. Anne, I think you did a nice job with AI especially the three swans in the lake and the sky replacement. Although, I also agree that your picture out of the camera look a lot better than these! By now, I hope you are feeling a lot better!

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  17. I just started playing around with the new AI feature in LR for simple edits and it’s very handy. As for the WP AI feature, well that needs improvement. It did provide me with a great deal of entertainment though. Hope you feel better soon. Unfortunately, I can relate all too well with that fuzzy head scenario.

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    1. Thank you Ingrid! I agree that the new LR feature will come in handy for some edits. I just have to learn to use it! I doubt I will count of WP for AI. I am feeling better and should be back to whatever normal is in a couple of days. Time heals.

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    1. Thanks Tracey! I think I found the AI prompt at the bottom of the WP page, and I went into the block editor. I’ve resisted using the block editor simply because I don’t like technical change. I should be totally healthy in a couple of days.

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  22. I hope you’re feeling better, Anne and kudos for tackling this challenge with a bad cold too. I think you’ve done well, you experimented and you concluded it’s not for you. It’s not for everyone, me included so I can see exactly where you’re coming from, one thing is small edits another a full prompt, and those small edits, do they really need all to be AI generated? We managed before without them 😀

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