I Don't Want You Asking "Is That AI?"
Mt. Harvard | RAW and Edited
I’m fairly new to taking my photography seriously. Still, the landscape shifted fast in the last couple of years. Chasing algorithms on Meta. AI-generated images flooding feeds. Just this week, Substack adding Pangram AI checks to posts. It’s enough to drive a sane man crazy.
Tools are tools, though. In my day job as a Communications Pastor, I use AI daily. As a one-person department, it acts like an assistant. It helps me write, organize, and create sermon graphics I couldn't otherwise illustrate or shoot myself. It stretches a tight budget. I control what I use, not the other way around.
Where does it cross into my photography? To be transparent, AI handles backend utility in my editing process. Denoise, upscaling, sky masking. It is just modern utility work. Not much different from what guys were doing in the darkroom fifty years ago. Ansel Adams dodged and burned prints using cutouts between the light and the paper to shift exposure and steer the eye. People probably criticized him back then, too.
The problem starts when people pass off fiction as reality. I recently saw a photo of Garden of the Gods with multiple roads added in that simply do not exist in the park. That's where the line gets crossed. Crank the contrast. Push the vignette. Saturate colors until your eyes bleed. We all know who we are. But don't invent a landscape that isn't there.
I don't ever want someone looking at my work asking, "Is that AI?" It's the reality of the world we live in now. Everything gets measured by that ruler.
So, to build trust, I’m going to show more of the real process in my work. Behind-the-scenes video on location. RAW files next to final edits and location details.
That last point bugs me about other photographers. Some act like they own a spot to protect it from being overrun, while standing there taking pictures themselves. Spoiler alert: you aren't the only one allowed to shoot there. But that's a post for another day.
I still use AI to help me write, but I'm turning the corner toward writing entirely in my own voice as well.
I'm not writing this from a high horse. I just want what I share to be as real to you as it was when I stood behind the camera. I want you to see what I see. In a broken world, there is still evidence of a God who cares for you. Sometimes it's a massive landscape. Sometimes it's the warm smile of a stranger on the street. Look around. It's there.
