Happy Halloween! Fall is really in full swing now and the mix of cool days and rain sure have the leaves hitting the ground. Speaking of leaves, cleaning up the leaves always seems like a race against time before the first snow arrives. Did you know that perhaps we shouldn’t be cleaning them up? An interesting article from PBS says that we should let them be.
Data suggests that one square meter of leaf litter could house between 40,000 to 50,000 springtails, tiny arthropods that are easy to overlook but important to ecosystems. Trashing leaves takes away an important source of protection for these and other critters in the colder months.
So in the spirit of wanting to do good for the ecosystem in my yard and to be honest, because any excuse to not do yard work is a good one, I will let them be.
Onto photography, the photo I am sharing today is actually one I have shared on Halloween for the last several years.
This photograph was taken on a stormy, foggy fall morning years ago. It had a spooky vibe with the building being dark, the sun starting to rise and backlighting the building. I thought it would be fun to do a composite. (The symmetry being off drives me nuts.)
So I went and started adding and blending things in. First, the lightning is added in Luminar, I wasn’t that lucky to actually capture a lightning strike. Next the skeletons created by @itfeelslikefilm were added in, I dropped them in various places around the campus, one is floating in the front doors, you really have to zoom into see it though. Lastly there is a skull in the clouds from @linawhitelife, its subtle but it is there.
This image is partially fake and partially real. Something that I think is important when doing composites is to label it as such and if I use work from other creators I give them credit. In the case of this image I think most people would presume it was fake as skulls don’t float in the clouds and skeletons don’t roam the campus.
As you read above, this is a composite image of multiple pieces, all combined to make something new. But now, we have AI image generators that would make it possible to create something similar with using prompts. Which could turn out to be a lot easier than the process I went through. However I think it should be disclosed just the same.
I have been asked if I am worried about AI in photography. The short answer is no, but I do have concerns. At a high level I wonder if the creators disclosing that it is AI generated, I think they should. I also question about how the AI is being trained and where that information is coming from.
Dealing with fake images was a concern before AI and will continue to be one going forward. The technology is here to stay, it is the worst it will ever be, it is only going to get more capable as time goes on. It would be better to embrace it and hopefully put safeguards around it then to ignore it and hope it goes away.
I have tried some of the AI image generators to see how they work. My experiment above with Midjourney was not all that impressive, and it looks more like an illustration. However it has come a long way since this test and I admittedly didn’t spend a lot of time with trying to improve on it.
When it comes to AI, are you running for the hills or jumping in with both feet?
Thanks for reading!
Karl