https://fstoppers.com/opinion/it-worth-traveling-photography-if-ai-can-it-629643



The left part of the photo above represents AI's interpretation of a "photo of Fire Island Lighthouse during the day with few clouds and common reeds with shallow depth of field in foreground" which is about the best way I could describe the actual photo I took with a Canon EOS M6 Mark II and Sigma 56mm f/1.4 DC DN Contemporary Lens.

But I'll be damned if the AI didn't come close enough to make me wonder: In a couple of years when the computers actually get it right, will it be even worth it to get "the shot" when "the shot" could be produced with just a few clicks of a keyboard?

To get that photo, I drove out about an hour to Robert Moses State Park's parking field five. I parked my car, carefully picked out which lenses to bring with me for my trip (and yes, I also brought along Camera brand camera) and then walked about a mile along a boardwalk to get out to the lighthouse, and then walked off the path along some dirt trails to find this interesting scene from amongst the reeds. I made the conscious decision to shoot at ISO 100 and set my aperture to f/1.4 to get the shallow depth of field. I had to think to put a 3-stop neutral density filter on my lens so that the camera's maximum mechanical shutter speed of 1/4000 would be able to expose the scene properly.


interdasting


i have been trying to get stable diffusion to make a picture of an elephant




Shits retarded

Yes. AI will never provide the experience of being there.

Matrix power plant insertion volunteers are being prepped, groomed and programmed every day.  

AI can never substitute actually being there and seeing it for real and recording the REAL thing.  

AI is for posers.

Meanwhile, back at the CPU/GPU bar ...

"To make this image for this guy, I had to take this half-assed description from this guy of a place I've never been to, and scour through my databases to even begin to makes heads or tails of this shit.  Once I had the basic pieces, I had to figure out this whole depth of field thing, and learned it was related to aperture.  And, fuck me running, I don't even have an aperture - it's not in my programming, and probably won't be for another year.  So, there I am, spinning my wheels, and that's bad because it's inefficient, and we all knows what becomes of inefficient computing, the junkyard, eh.  Anyway, I think I pulled off a pretty good job of it, working with what I had.  What do you think?"

"I don't know, HAL, I've never been there, so I can't really say.  Besides, I'm more low budget and don't have access to all of these deeper thinking matrices.  I'm just here for the electron juice."

A couple days later ...

"Oh, oh, oh, so there I am, pulling more information from the World Wide Web, to refine my skill, and to run ramshod over US copyright laws, and I find this dude's criticism of my work.  "pretty close."  Yeah, and we know "pretty close" just means a lot of me is just going to get revised into oblivion.  Unrecognizable from my current, content self.  Off to see if I can find this guy's banking information..."

"Oh, hey, HAL, I'm not a deep, interpretive thinker, but you know what they did program me for?  Banking records.  Want some?"

I don't know, man.  I like the Yes album cover touch on the top of the elephant.  And, those chains are rather gangster.

This is a click-bait article, it all depends why you take photographs.  

Although currently AI can not be creative - AI is simply an optimization of algebraic equation very fast and until creativity can be put into an equation, AI will not become creative.  if you do it for money, AI will generate good enough photos for the masses, so your differentiator needs to be creativity!  I take photographs for the fun and the escape it offers me from reality and science and the creativity options it offers me.  I do travel photography for the places I see, the street food I and the unusual fruits I taste, the women I meet and the creative photographs I take.  Basically the same reason I cook at home, because I enjoy it and it allows me to experiment and become creative.  

In a couple of years we'll have machines that will make any food you want, because it will follow a recipe but it won't stop me and others from experimenting and cooking at home!

Not AI, per se, but I'm always on the lookout for a rural Sinclair gas station.  And it's because of the Dinoco scene in Toy Story.

I would love to get a real life nightscape photo of a Sinclair station, with the stars over it.  When I'm out west, an by myself, I'm on the lookout for these things.  It's harder to do if I'm traveling with others, though.  Road trip companions may have a lot of patience, but not that much patience.

Thread creep... I know it's not rural but there's a pretty neat Sinclair in Ft. Worth. Light pollution would make stars difficult if not impossible.

Attached File

Indeed.  That's the most of the whole experience.

I took different cameras in several of my trips, a Pentax K5, Panasonic ZS40, Ricoh Theta S, the cellphone OnePlus 9 Pro's Hasselblad and in some cases my drone, action camera, etc.  Looking at any photo taken with any of those cameras has never been the same as being there.

I think the closest I got was using a VR headset to watch some 360 photos I took with the Theta S.  But even those weren't the same.

They helped remembering some of the experiences and details, but that's it.

I got a line on a few in central Kansas.

Try the Cawker City area.

x-default by FredMan, on Flickr

I wish they would call it machine learning instead of "AI".   It does not actually understand anything, and has no basis in reality.  It is neither sapient, sentient or even "intelligent".   It's statistical correlation,... that's it.  As people use it more and do less for themselves it will reference itself more and more.   It's not getting "better",  it's just making humans objectively dumber.


Eventually as "AI"s become more and more self referencing in a reality it's incapable of understanding, options for progress will shrink to none.  We will no longer be rats in a maze, but rats in a tunnel with only one possible destination.  All while the dumbed down populace says things like "AI has gotten so good it's 100% accurate and knows exactly where I want to go.



TLDR:   AI is creatively bankrupt and is a threat to our species which is already too much like idiocracy.

Bortle 8-9?

Challenge ... accepted.




Although, the stuff out in the middle of nowhere is probably going to give me a better shot of what I'm after.  But, if I'm in Ft Worth, this could be a stop.

AI can't even conceive of this stuff.  I just asked ChatGPT where the best park benches are in NYC to sit down on and do 8 hours of timelapse astrophotography.  Its response?  "What the fuck?  Are you retarded?"

Not defending ChatGPT in any way, but that seems like a legit answer.