Photography & Artistic Meaning in the Age of AI

My love of photography is driven by the desire to document moments I find interesting. The expressive side of my craft allows me to create images for ideas and feelings that are difficult to pin down with words. My artistic taste leans toward the surreal and unexpected. I enjoy finding interesting juxtapositions and new compositions within familiar subjects and landscapes.

I have recently been working deep in my archives, rediscovering older work. I have been surprised to see how often my photographic eye finds recurring moods and concepts over the course of decades. From film to digital cameras, through childhood, adolescence and well into adulthood, these themes are a consistent reflection of my interests and artistic curiosities.

I have been able to develop my unique photographic perspective through years of experimentation. Learning new techniques and pushing my skills further has served me well in pursuit of the images I envision. With a camera in-hand, even the most uneventful walk in the woods becomes an opportunity to interpret what I see through a lens of emotional intuition.

My work is also a fusion of inspiration from countless other photographers, artists, musicians and authors. Like all creative pursuits, the images I create are a summation of their parts and echos of work that came before. This is the beauty of human creativity, as individual experiences and interests merge with collective ideas they can be expressed through any number of mediums.

I realize that many of my favourite photographs may only hold deeper meaning for me. I can look at an image and remember where I stood, how the air felt, the ambient sounds and peripheral activity of that moment. But in the responses of viewers to my work, I can sometimes see that elements of my images may also hold resonance for others. This satisfies my craving to communicate through photography. Whether a photograph is seen as beautiful, interesting, or even challenging, connections are being made.

Great Photos, You Must Have a Nice Camera

As photographic technology has advanced, the assumption that good equipment is all it takes to make good photos has become commonplace. Aren’t photographers just pressing buttons? These days everyone has a phone in their pocket, everyone is a photographer.

Human effort is involved in recording actual people, places and things. Our presence, and that of the camera, is the first step. So much more goes into the act of photographing something with intention. Photography is where technology, technical skill and creativity are combined by a human mind to offer us new perspectives. Maybe it is a snapshot with a smartphone camera or more advanced equipment is involved. The common denominator is that human perspective thought to make the photo in the first place.

Years ago I worked in the studio of a renowned National Geographic photographer. His lifetime of documenting the natural world could be quantified in tens of thousands of film and digital images and countless well-earned accolades. Seeing behind the scenes and working with his photographs in their raw form, it was clear that his technical skills and access to the best photographic equipment were only part of the equation. He had also dedicated himself to being in the presence of remarkable places and animals, travelling to remote and difficult locations to document subjects we’d rarely see otherwise. Because his goal was to convey important stories of conservation and biodiversity, the beauty of his photographs has been made even more impactful by the way his creativity brings an artistic angle to each subject. This photographer’s unique combination of skill, presence and creative vision took a lifetime to develop. Someone else with access to the same equipment and a plane ticket to the same locations would not be able to create the same images.

My work may not compare to that of the most established professionals, but I make the most of what I have access to. Just as writers are advised to write what they know, photographers do best when they make the best of their tools and available subjects. Even the least glamorous experiences offer creative opportunities. I have learned over the years that working with limitations to my equipment can force me to photograph with a much more instinctive mindset. This opens the door to a more adventurous and playful kind of creativity that never fails to bring satisfying results. New tools can be exciting, but rarely do they solve more problems than they create.

Why the Work Matters

There is much talk of “friction” these days. The pursuit of efficiency and a removal of all inconveniences may seem harmless and desirable. Why shouldn’t we want to get from point A to point B as quickly and as painlessly as possible?

Yet friction encountered in creative pursuits is a big part of how the magic happens. Failures and mistakes are where the discoveries are made. Coming up against a gap in technical skill or not having the best possible tools for the job forces us to get creative.

The National Geographic photographer may travel halfway around the world in pursuit of a story, only to arrive and find conditions are less than ideal. I have had plenty of experiences where a planned outdoor client session had disappointing light or uncooperative weather. Thankfully, these exercises in problem-solving often prompt new, exciting ideas that we would not have been otherwise challenged to discover. Friction is where the most effective learning and interesting innovation happens.

Technical skill, emotional instinct, limitations of technology, environment and budget. Every photograph, artwork, song, movie and book you have ever enjoyed is a collection of these aspects. Influential earlier works and trending philosophies of the time are often unconsciously a part of the process. All of these elements can be gathered, synthesized and reinterpreted by human minds in the pursuit of new stories and expressive works. The meaning and potential connection to an audience comes from human intervention, craft and creativity.

There Are No Shortcuts to Fulfilling Creative Intent

All of this brings us to a present reality in which AI technology has begun to erode our experience of meaningful images. If art is a deeply human activity, wherein someone has brought their experiences, technical skills and problem-solving intentionally to the task of creating something that communicates feelings and information to other humans, then what does one accomplish through prompting a generative AI model?

I could compose a string of prompts, borrowing form the known styles of other photographers. I could use this approach to generate an image of something that has never existed and will never happen. Even better, I can make an image that might fool someone into believing the scene is real, since that could make it more compelling, right? I don’t have to put myself and my camera in the presence of anything remarkable. I don’t have to struggle to find a composition that satisfies the limitations of the day’s dull overcast skies. I don’t have to engineer a complicated series of practical effects in a studio. I don’t even have to develop my technical skills or think about which lens and light might best create the effect I seek.

Press a few keys, let the machine gargle some irreplaceable freshwater from an aquifer, and watch it belch out an approximation of reality that most viewers won’t pause long enough to register as completely false. Whether you apply this process to images or text, the ecological and cognitive cost is the same.

Does the image incorporate elements borrowed from reality? Probably. Generative AI can only pull from the repository of what has already existed and been ingested for training purposes. However, that this technology is unequivocally designed to twist the truth and undermine our collective sense of reality should be alarming.

Isn’t AI Just a Tool?

We are told that generative AI is an inevitable new technology. To what end? For the average person, these “tools” are thought of as a way to reduce creative and critical thinking friction. Churn out text for a website, generate some images you don’t have to pay to license, summarize that dense text your university degree requires you to read. Skip over the need to learn a few new skills to complete that annoying item on your to-do list.

For businesses and shareholders, generative AI is a way to reduce the need for human employees and their pesky paychecks. Those of us in creative fields have felt this push to optimize our often esoteric tasks. This declining aspect of creative employment, photography especially, is nothing new. Our employers and clients don’t understand the layers of experience and effort that go into our craft, and so they think our services (and time) should cost them less. Now they are being sold an alternative that looks like a fantastic shortcut, cutting out the inconvenient human element altogether.

Perhaps this technology could have some useful applications, but that it has been first allowed and encouraged to encroach unrestrained into creative fields is quite telling.

Generative AI images are not only dangerous in their ability to mislead and misinform, but they will continue to erode our collective understanding of reality and emotional connection. As an example, photojournalists are uniquely tasked to document political and social stories. We trust that the images shown alongside news stories are truthful. Yes, a photographer may choose to crop out a detail that serves a biased narrative, but often there will be more than one camera present, offering a way to cross-reference and better understand the scene as a whole. Now someone can generate an image of something for which no cameras were present. Or generate images close enough to reality but with important details changed, so as to confuse viewers with a different version of the truth. No need to learn Photoshop or leave a trail of digital evidence as happens when an original image gets modified, making this kind of manipulation even more readily available to those who would use it to pursue and preserve power.

The majority of the voting public lacks the media literacy to effectively scrutinize the propaganda headed their way. What has been an integral part of how our modern society communicates visually and politically for over 100 years has been rendered untrustworthy overnight.

You and I will be fooled by generative AI images, many times over. We will also suffer the consequences of AI in the political sphere, as misinformation becomes supercharged by the power and low-friction accessibility of a largely ungovernable fabrication machine.

But [insert creative/critical thinking/learning activity here ] is Hard! And Not Everyone is Using AI for Evil.

There are many people arguing that the benefits of generative AI outweigh the possible harms. Unfortunately in most instances, this is not the case. It is very easy to mistake a perceived reduction in friction as process improvement, but the cost of the AI shortcut is steep.

We are already seeing how the internet has been inundated with “AI slop” generated mostly to monetize our attention. AI-induced psychosis rapidly became a problem that no one knows quite how to tackle since governments seem to lack the will and ability to impose regulations. Reductions in learning and cognitive ability are being documented in ChatGPT users. Employers are adopting AI in workflows with the claim that it improves efficiency, but already the output from these AI “tools” has been shown to be problematic and sloppy, requiring human intervention to fix. We know that AI “hallucinates” aka outright lies about sources, invents medical journals, legal precedents, and complete nonsense in the pursuit of satisfying end-users who lack the discernment or will to check ChatGPT’s work. This is technology designed to foster dependence and ignorance, replacing our ability to think critically with an addiction to short soundbite summaries and easy answers.

Despite these drawbacks, governments and institutions are charging ahead with AI adoption, hoping to let it manage our healthcare, educational systems, and municipal decisions. It is being used as a shortcut to reduce the costs of hiring actual humans, not as a supplemental technology. And why the rush to implement an unproven, possibly dangerous technology? Those tech companies need to prove their worth to their investors, lest the bottom line slip and the bubble burst. So what if we sacrifice human creativity and the ability to engage in complex critical thought on the altar of so-called progress, this is the future no one asked for and we’re all expected to blindly accept.

Is Intentional Creative Engagement with Generative AI Possible?

There are some photographers and artists who are taking a proactive approach and exploring ways of integrating generative AI into their workflows. One photographer who I have admired and considered an influence for many years has launched a project that combines his very unique style with AI technology to create entirely new images. He has been transparent about the process and intention behind this project. I respect the willingness to experiment with this new technology on his own terms and as a complimentary tool, even though I haven’t decided how I feel about the resulting images. Unfortunately, such intentional use of generative AI as part of the artistic process of interpretation is very different from how most of us will encounter the results of the average prompter.

This is not to say that “pure” photography is dead. Much as the naysayers condemned film to supposed obscurity with the advent of digital cameras, the idea that photography will suddenly cease to be relevant is not realistic. There are those of us who will continue to create images that come from a place of human experience and emotion. Machines may attempt to mimic the human perspective but I am confident that they will never be able to fully replicate it. So far, the artists and photographers engaging intentionally with AI have to incorporate a large degree of human intervention to achieve their desired results.

The Upside

Lately I have turned toward more tangible creative outlets while my cameras collect a little dust. I am learning print-making and revisiting my love of drawing, which has satisfied an urge to engage in expressive acts that are not tied to computers. These efforts are also not geared toward an end-game of being offered up to the internet for consumption.

This sentiment and shift in focus is one I have seen echoed by many artists and creatives lately. For many of us, the most natural response to the encroachment of generative AI into our lives and work has been to reconnect with techniques that can not be regurgitated by machines

This past year I have become more and more reluctant to share my work online. I feel obligated to, because if I don’t have a presence online I may as well not exist. But little hearts and likes don’t translate to much. Selling prints and licensing images is especially challenging right now. Admittedly, this is partly because it has become increasingly uncomfortable to attempt to sell anything creative in this late-stage capitalist dystopia.

Still, I can’t help but think of every print sold as an act of defiance, a way in which my creative work can exist in tangible form and bring someone enjoyment away from the noise of an online environment of endless consumption. To those of you who buy physical artwork of any kind, thank you, those small purchases may be more meaningful to the artist than you realize.

When it comes to photography, if I am being really honest, I am a bit heartbroken. This pursuit has brought me such immense joy and expressive opportunity throughout my life. It has been a source of comfort, life lessons, connections, and creative fulfillment. Photography has been a constant companion through the highest highs and lowest lows of the past several decades.

The impulse to raise my camera to my eye and to follow my visual instincts in pursuit of a pleasing composition is something I will always have. There is something grounding in the act of photography, pulling me into appreciating the present moment more deeply. With any luck I manage to bottle some of that feeling into an image to share and connect with others.

Now I have arrived at a moment in which it feels a bit like I am starting over. Searching for the meaning inherent to the creative act of pressing the shutter release. I simultaneously believe that my human perspective holds value, while also worrying that the meaning is gone if the same image can simply be generated by a machine. And yet. even as AI encroaches with its unsettling brand of “uncanny”, I will continue to pursue my love of surreal, dreamlike images. All I can do is stay true to my creative intentions and press forward in the sort of work I feel fundamentally compelled to create.

Resistance is an Act of Hope

We will all be tricked by AI images, it has become inevitable. Recognizing when something has been created by a human, with their experiences, emotional intelligence, and technical skills, remains important. Appreciating when human-made art connects with us is a poignant part of being human. Never has this been more true than now, in a world bent on consuming and amalgamating our creativity into technological forms designed only to generate profits and distrust.

I suppose this is my plea to you, dear reader, to not give in to the temptations of convenience and unnecessary technology. Every creative field that pertains to communicating ideas, feelings, and stories, is under the same threat right now, but as viewers, readers, listeners the choice is ultimately ours. We can decide to turn away from the shiny new plagiarism machines and instead seek visuals, music and writing created unapologetically by human hearts and hands. We can embrace the friction of mental labour and critical thinking, or we can take our brains offline and let the machines think for us instead. Despite what the headlines and people in power tell us, the widespread adoption of AI into our lives is not inevitable, we still can choose to draw the line and protect what makes us human.

My cameras won’t collect dust for long. I have so many ideas still to explore and will continue to encounter stories that I would like to share. Could AI ever replicate and replace the work I create? Maybe. Will you be able to tell the difference? I hope so.

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To anyone who read this lengthy post, thank you. I use a non-AI editing tool that indicates this piece has a reading time of around 15 minutes at a grade 11 level. I know we all find it difficult to fit in the time and focus to enjoy longer-form writing and I appreciate you having made the effort. Your brain probably appreciates it too!

For an excellent perspective on the broader implications of AI technology as it will affect people working in creative fields and beyond, and some ideas on how to effectively criticize a deeply-flawed technology that we are being told is inevitable, you may want to set aside some time to read The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI (05 Dec 2025) by Cory Doctorow