Photography

I’ve never been too far from a camera. Ever since my parents gave me a Miranda Sharpshooter for Christmas at the age of 8, I’ve had a succession of different cameras.

As I reached my late 20s and early 30s, photography as a hobby became a much bigger part of my life. I completed a number of daily photo projects, cycled through various photo editing applications and basically lost myself to this world of seemingly limitless possibilities. Unfortunately, Grand Theft Autocomplete changed all that.

Why we do things

One thing that is often forgotten by the ’tech bro’ sect is that, people make things not because it is easy, but because it actually means something to them. With art, with photography, with any creative act, you don’t always strike gold. It is not a zero-sum game and sometimes just the act of getting outside, feeling the changing seasons on your skin and thinking about the potential of any moment that comes your way is all you need.

When that time comes where the planet aligns in your favour and you make a great photograph, it’s a great feeling, but the journey that got you to that location and the work you had put in up to that point is every bit as important.

Using AI to create images, music or text is culturally, emotionally and by all other possible measures, worthless. There is no skill in trying to get a planet-killing chatbot to churn out worthless slop. All it does is make the people around you think so much less of you.

A few years ago I got into long-distance cycling. I realised that I could cover a lot of ground using just a bicycle and a handful of flapjacks for fuel. I visited places I never would have visited by car; I earned every kilometre I pedalled through (in Wales most of those are uphill) and had experiences that have continued to live in my memory ever since. Despite having a driving license and a succession of cars for nearly 30 years, my memories of trips taken by car are almost non-existent. Yes, it may get you to the same place, but the experience of getting there is incomparable.

Am I saying AI is like cars? Why yes, yes I am. Where cars destroy cities, AI destroys communities; our sense of meaning and our planet. So, like cars then? Well, now you come to mention it...

I still love photography

I do, honestly, still love making photographs. I just think lately I’ve lost interest in sharing them on an internet that continues to be asset-stripped by an unthinking and unfeeling LLM industrial complex.

With a bit of luck, Grand Theft Autocomplete will soon tootle off to the tech graveyard in the sky, along with Crypto assets, 3D TVs and everything Mark Zuckerberg has ever created.

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