In the era of artificial intelligence, industries across the board have been subject to transformative changes. The photography industry, like many others, is poised at the precipice of a revolution. The rise of generative AI, capable of creating unique, never-before-seen images in response to a given prompt, threatens to upend the conventional norms of professional photography. But does this signify the death of an industry, or merely its evolution?

The capabilities of AI have grown at an astonishing rate, with its algorithms creating art, composing music, and even writing text that is nearly indistinguishable from human work. The arrival of AI systems that can create realistic images based on specific briefs presents an undeniable potential for disruption in the realm of professional photography.

This evolution calls into question the very relevance of traditional, human-centric stock imagery and commissioned shoots. With the costs associated with AI-driven image creation expected to decrease over time, the prospect of generative AI replacing certain aspects of the photography market seems plausible. After all, why would a picture editor pay for stock imagery when AI can generate it quickly and economically?

Yet, as alarming as this prospect might seem for professional photographers, it is crucial to consider the whole picture. While the capabilities of AI are impressive, there is an array of elements intrinsic to human-driven photography that, as of yet, remains out of reach for AI.

Photography, at its heart, is not just about snapping pictures—it is a form of communication, telling stories through a blend of technical skill, creative instinct, and an eye for detail. It is about capturing moments, evoking emotions, and creating narratives. This nuanced understanding of context, empathy, and the human condition is something AI currently lacks, despite its impressive strides.

Moreover, there’s a significant element of human experience that feeds into a photographer’s work—understanding a client’s needs, their personalities, their brand ethos, and more. These subtle, yet critical, nuances often make the difference between a good photograph and a great one. Until AI can demonstrate this level of sophistication, there will always be a niche for professional photographers.

So, what’s next for the professionals? Will they become obsolete in this brave new world of generative AI? Far from it. Rather than fearing the rise of AI, it would be more constructive to embrace it as a tool that can elevate their craft.

Generative AI can help alleviate the mundane tasks and allow photographers to focus more on creativity and innovation. It can serve as an aid, providing preliminary drafts that photographers can build upon, thus augmenting their capabilities rather than replacing them outright. Photographers can also harness AI to offer a greater range of services and open up new avenues for their businesses.

The future will likely see a blend of AI and human creativity, with each pushing the other to new heights. The intersection of photography and AI is not a death knell but rather an opportunity for photographers to explore new terrains, push their creative boundaries, and redefine their roles in this evolving landscape.

Change is inevitable. Like every other industry disrupted by technology, professional photography must adapt. However, one thing remains certain amidst this flux: as long as there is a need for human connection, empathy, and creative expression, there will be a need for the human touch in photography, AI or not. So, rather than killing the market for professional photography, generative AI might just breathe new life into it.

As the twins spent more time with the IONIQ 5, they were thrilled to discover how well it could integrate with their creative workflow.

They were particularly impressed with the V2L (Vehicle-to-Load) feature, an innovative technology facilitated by the IONIQ 5’s electric powertrain. V2L allows the car to function as a large power bank on wheels, providing electricity to various devices such as laptops and lighting equipment through an external socket on the car’s charging port or an internal V2L socket located under the back row of seats.

For professional photographers like the Yusmans, a reliable power source is invaluable and V2L enables them to keep their gear charged and ready to capture those fleeting moments. They also appreciate having all the power they need to work on post-production and editing without any interruptions to their creative flow due to low-battery issues.

“Today’s mobile phones can endure for quite some time, but you may need to charge your laptop, especially if you’ve been using it to run demanding applications, like editing photos or videos for a few hours. This ability to charge your devices is a feature I would definitely look out for in a car,” said Yais.

The IONIQ 5 itself is no slouch in the charging department. When plugged into a 350kW DC charger, its battery can be recharged from 10 per cent to 80 per cent in just 18 minutes.

A FLEXIBLE SPACE

Unauthorized snapshots may infringe on portrait rights, lawyers cautioned

Whether street photography and filming constitute infringements of privacy and portrait rights was the topic of heated discussion on Chinese social media platforms over the past week after a former State-owned enterprise official was filmed in public holding hands with a woman.

The controversy involving Hu Jiyong, a general manager of a Beijing-based company affiliated with China National Petroleum Engineering Corp (CPEC), arose when a video clip of him strolling along a street in Chengdu, Sichuan province, holding hands with a young woman went viral on Wednesday. CPEC is a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corp.

Netizens quickly identified Hu, who was on a business trip to Chengdu, and noted that the woman was neither his wife nor his daughter.

On Wednesday afternoon, Hu, who served as the executive director, Party secretary and general manager of Huanqiu Project Management (Beijing) Co, was removed from his posts and placed under disciplinary investigation, according to a release issued by the company.

The incident, dubbed “hand-holding gate” by some media organizations, quickly topped the most-searched list last week on various social media platforms. It also sparked heated public discussion of whether street photography can constitute an infringement of privacy.

On Thursday. the photographer in question told Dahe Daily, a news portal in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, that he received messages from Hu and the woman after posting the video online and that he had removed it from the internet.

He said that neither Hu nor his companion objected to being photographed at the time and that he would not take photos or videos of people if they were unwilling, much less post them online.

“Taking photos or videos on the street, as was the case in Chengdu, doesn’t infringe upon the right of privacy, because the street is public space,” said Yi Shenghua, a lawyer at Beijing Yongzhe Law Firm. “But the act can infringe upon a person’s right of portrait.”

Wang Weiwei, a lawyer at Beijing Zhongwen Law Firm, explained that if photographers take photos of passersby without their permission and post them publicly, or use the images for profit, they could be guilty of violating the portrait rights of those photographed.

Under the Civil Code, all residents hold the legal rights to their portraits. Without the owner’s permission, portraits may not be posted, copied, published, rented exhibited, or used in other public areas.

But if portraits relate to the public interest, such as is the case with news reports, performance of duty or supervision, or are used for personal studies or for illustrating a specific public environment, they can be posted without permission, according to Shan Yanwei, a lawyer at the Bluerule Law Firm in Henan.

All the lawyers interviewed have called for street photographers to abide by the law and respect the legitimate rights of passersby, and suggested prudence while working on the street to ensure their behavior complies with the law, ethics and morals.

“This doesn’t mean that street photography should be completely rejected because of this incident, but photographers and citizens should be more aware of the legal risks of taking public photos and be careful not to create disputes,” Wang added.

While the Chengdu photo resulted in scandal for the former official, it also brought the city’s Taikoo Li, a business and fashion zone, back into the public focus.

With the rapid development and popularity of short videos in recent years, Taikoo Li in Chengdu, like other areas such as Sanlitun in Beijing and Anfu Road in Shanghai, has become a favorite spot for visitors, including online celebrities and fashion stars, to take photos and make videos. They are also popular locations among street photographers.

On Thursday, when Jimu News visited Chengdu Taikoo Li, it found that yellow notices had been placed along the street reminding passersby to be more aware of protecting their right of portrait and clarifying that filming shoppers would not be supported.

Service staff at Taikoo Li told the news portal that the signboards have been in place for several years, but that it was still possible to take photos in the area.

They pointed out that taking photos for business purposes requires permission, but that there was no restriction on private photography.

Beijing’s Sanlitun Taikoo Li also issued a “street photography reminder” on Friday evening, stating that there are multiple warning signs in prominent locations in the popular shopping area, reminding customers to be more aware of protecting their personal portrait rights.

Sanlitun Taikoo Li does not support any unauthorized commercial photography and has a formal application channel for commercial photography, it said.

It was a single black-and-white image of a young man lying on an Australian beach that defined the career of photographer Max Dupain.    

But two years before the Sunbaker was captured in 1937, the Sydney-born artist agreed to an assignment that led him far from the beaches and into the heart of north Queensland’s sugarcane country.

It’s a project that photographer and Mr Dupain’s studio manager of more than 30 years, Jill White, says has been largely forgotten.

“CSR Limited [Colonial Sugar Refining Company] wanted him to go up and cover the stories and different aspects of the cane growing in the mills.”

Recognised as one of the most prolific Australian photographers of the 20th century, Dupain journeyed through the cane fields of the Burdekin, Ingham, and Innisfail capturing the stories of the workers, families, and children who made their living on the land.

But the resulting works, captured over 40 years, have largely escaped the public eye.

A ‘very long and very diverse’ career

Born in Sydney in 1911, Dupain’s professional career spanned more than 60 years predominantly documenting the Australian landscape.

But it was after Dupain opened his photography studio in 1934 when CSR, which operated sugar mills across north Queensland, became his first commercial customer the following year.

Ms White says Dupain’s main photographic expedition occurred in the 1950s and he returned to the region on multiple trips until the late 1970s.   

“I think he enjoyed getting away and getting up and doing something different out in the open air,” Ms White says.

“There was a lot of preparation for jobs like that when they were away for a week or so because he couldn’t necessarily just go down to the corner shop and buy rolls of black-and-white film.

Wayne Tunnicliffe is the head curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of NSW, which holds the majority of the Queensland collection. He says Dupain’s partnership with CSR was a crucial part of establishing his practice in his early career.

“There were very few opportunities to show photographs in an art context in the 1960s and little chance of generating income.

“The sugar cane is just a small component of his work for CSR … he’s photographing other factories, pastoral properties, all sorts of aspects of their very broad operation through Australia.”

Despite the commercial nature of the project, Mr Tunnicliffe says Dupain maintained an enormous amount of freedom in his photography, resulting in “incredibly powerful” images.

“What [CSR] seem to have done is not asked for just a straightforward documentary approach, but wanting something more than that,” he says.

“You can clearly get a sense of Max looking for these singular images, which convey an experience and almost an emotional tenor, and that is very much part of his practice.

The Australian spirit on camera

The collection was donated by CSR to the Art Gallery of NSW and Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) during the 1980s when they featured as part of an exhibition marking 200 years of refinery operations in Australia.

It is believed to be the first recorded time they were displayed in public, and since then they haven’t been seen as a collection for more than 30 years.

“They sort of don’t come out for long periods of time … with works on paper, we have to consider things like resting them when they’re on display for a certain time to just keep the quality of them,” Michael Hawker, curator of Australian art at QAGOMA, says.

“We sort of tend to think of Dupain with those great major images like the Sunbaker, which is capturing the ethos of Australia … but he was getting out there in the outback in industrial and working environments as well.”

Even after Dupain’s death in 1992, Mr Hawker says the timeless qualities of his work continue to resonate with modern audiences.

“He was very much at the forefront of art photography at the time and influenced a lot of younger photographers who are coming through after him.”

A scholar, artist and heir to a considerable fortune, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey set off from his native France in 1842 for a tour of the historic archeology of the Eastern Mediterranean. But, more than just an eager sightseer, Girault de Prangey planned to capture such famed structures as the Acropolis in Athens and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem via daguerreotype – the world’s first publicly accessible photographic process – with the intent of publishing and selling his images. These pictures, as well as the additional street scenes and cityscapes he would capture along the way, would eventually become historic in their own right, in some cases representing the oldest surviving photographs of the places depicted. However, as this video essay from the YouTube channel Kings and Things details, these remarkable images would go almost entirely unseen until the 1920s, some three decades after Girault de Prangey’s death. Inviting viewers to retrace this photographer’s footsteps, the video presents a riveting window onto the Eastern Mediterranean as it existed nearly two centuries ago, at the dawn of the photographic age. For more from Kings and Things, watch The Impossible Architecture of Étienne-Louis Boullée.

Nominations Now Open for the Hagerty/TCBN 40Under40

For 17 years, the Traverse City Business News, sister publication to Northern Express, has been celebrating the young move…
Read More >>