With AI art becoming more and more accessible to the general public through tools such as Midjourney and DALL-E, people are starting to wonder what this means for ‘natural’ photography. Will people still value the effort taken to produce images from reality and that are still photographically ‘honest’? It’s an interesting question... if you’re going to buy a photograph or artwork to hang on your wall, does it matter to you that it represents a real place or moment in time or that the artist played more than a directorial role in its creation?

For some people it probably won’t. Art may just be something that looks aesthetically pleasing and perhaps creates a talking point. For others though, art is a channel to the artist, it’s also sometimes evocative of a place and time. I think what we’ll see is more differentiation and more discussion of what a photograph means and how it was created. Perhaps people will eventually want to know that there artwork was made by humans and represents somewhere in the real world?

We’ll probably end up with just one more type of visual art added to the mix, just as photography was added to painting and sketching. But just as people buying photorealistic paintings want to know that they’re not just photos, I’m sure people buying photos will want to know that they’re not just AI. I’ll try to expand on this in an article for our christmas edition. Until then, here’s a photograph from a very real (and cold) Bidean Nam Bian in some fantastic lighting conditions from last week.

Click here to download issue 269 (high quality, 165Mb)

Click here to download issue 269 (smaller download, 105Mb)

A non-AI, Natural photograph of Bidean nam Bian, Glencoe

Tim Parkin

Issue 269

Click here to download issue 269 (high quality, 165Mb) Click here to download issue 269 (smaller download, 105Mb) more →

End frame: Skyfall by Valda Bailey

n the face of it, it’s a little ominous and there could even be a storm brewing. There is something very dark in the background – a cliff? an approaching storm? The palette is subdued, mainly shades of blue, white and black, with some touches of warmer browns in the foreground more →

Natural Landscape Photography Awards 2022

The Natural Landscape Photography Awards are all wrapped up and I’m sitting here compiling the book to go with the 2022 results. I thought it would be interesting to recap on the process and show some of the winners and also some of my own personal favourites from our competition finalists. Going into the competition this year, we weren’t certain of its success. We had done so well in the first year but we knew that there were many people more →

Familiarity and Seeing

I have heard some people describe their approach to making pictures with a camera as though they are trying to solve a puzzle. I like this idea, we each choose our own puzzles to solve, which can change from day to day, moment to moment, and we each have our own novel approaches to the ways in which we solve them. more →

Jason Pettit – Portrait of a Photographer

All photographs might function as an Equivalent to someone, sometime, someplace – for example, a viewer may respond to a photograph by recognising something about themselves more →

Project Based Working

A photo story also falls under photo projects, but a photo project does not always result in a photo story. You can also have a photo project with no real storyline or a story that is too limited to count as 'storytelling'. more →

Using the Cambo Actus MV

MV stands for Maximum Versatility. And Cambo seems to have thrown the kitchen sink at designing this technical camera. Abandoning backwards support for film, it was designed from the ground up for digital mirrorless cameras and digital backs. more →

Stephen Bakalich-Murdoch

Every journey ebbs and flows, and it has taken quite a few years to accept that there will be times when I feel inspired and times when I won't. I don't pressure myself if there isn't motivation more →

A Mindful Approach to a Familiar Place

That was a new aspect of a place for me, which I used to experience as tranquil and peaceful, but now full of action. A mindful approach after slowing down and taking in all the sensations has opened a new way of looking at a familiar place for me. more →