Why I’m Not Afraid of AI—and Why You Shouldn’t Be Either
There’s a strange contradiction I’ve noticed in my own photographic life.
The more I learned—about exposure, composition, light, timing—the less often I pressed the shutter. As my standards rose, my tolerance for imperfection dropped. If the light wasn’t right, if the frame wasn’t clean, if the moment didn’t feel worthy, I walked on.
That restraint felt like progress. And in a technical sense, it was.
But somewhere along the way, something else slipped out of the frame.
Humanity.
Photography, it turns out, doesn’t just tolerate imperfection. It needs it. And that realization is exactly why I’m not afraid of AI.
The Myth of the Perfect Photograph
We live in a moment where perfection is cheap.
Cameras can see in the dark. Autofocus tracks eyes better than we ever could. Software cleans noise, fixes colour, straightens lines, and replaces skies. And now AI can generate images that look technically flawless—perfect lighting, perfect subjects, perfect balance.
And yet… I don’t care.
These images don’t make me linger.
I don’t feel compelled to return to the image.
I’ve written before about the difference between a snap and a photograph. A technically competent image can be attractive and instantly forgettable at the same time. Perfection alone doesn’t earn attention—it often repels it. There’s nothing for the viewer to do inside the frame.
No friction. No struggle. No trace of the person who made it, because there was not one.
Photography Begs for Imperfection
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that photography begs for imperfection. I’d argue it requires it.
When we obsess over removing every flaw, we also remove the evidence of presence. The hesitation. The risk. We lose the value of the moment that we chose to raise the camera rather than walk past.
Street photography taught me this the hard way.
Walking the city—really walking it—means accepting missed focus, blown highlights, awkward framing, and frames that almost work but don’t quite. Yet those near-misses are often where the truth lives. They carry the fingerprints of decision-making under pressure.
That’s why my commitment to a single field of view matters to me. Not because it is optimized, but because it is constrained, human, and repeatable. I show up imperfectly, again and again.
AI doesn’t walk. It doesn’t hesitate. It doesn’t commit and then doubt itself two steps later.
The Tortured Artist Trap
There’s a long-standing myth that great art requires suffering—the romanticized image of the tortured artist. It’s a seductive idea, but it’s incomplete.
Suffering itself isn’t the fuel. Transformation is.
Pain can sharpen perception. So can joy. So can obsession, curiosity, discipline, boredom, recovery, and self-chosen constraint. What matters isn’t misery—it’s lived experience processed with intention.
This is something I’ve wrestled with openly across my writing: discipline over talent, walking over waiting, projects over inspiration. Creativity thrives when experience is metabolized, not when it overwhelms.
And this is where AI fundamentally fails.
AI cannot suffer—but more importantly, it cannot heal. It cannot choose to walk anyway. It cannot decide that winter will define a body of work, or that a project will remain imperfect by design. It cannot accept limitations and find meaning inside them.
AI can imitate outcomes. It cannot participate in the process.
Photography Isn’t Dying, It’s Splitting
People say photography is dying because AI can now produce images without cameras, without effort, without cost.
What’s actually happening is a split.
On one side is frictionless imagery: infinite, optimized, disposable. Perfect for marketing, placeholders, mood boards, and visual noise.
On the other side are photographs made by someone. Images that carry time, presence, and consequence. Images that required walking, waiting, missing, returning, and sometimes failing.
Why This Is the Best Time to Be Bad at Photography
There has never been a better time to make awkward pictures.
- To shoot through bad light.
- To embrace motion blur.
- To let flash be harsh.
- To frame imperfectly.
- To return with fewer keepers than you hoped for.
Because perfection is no longer impressive. Humanity is, and by extension imperection is.
This is why I keep returning to process-driven work: essays, projects, constraints, and long life arcs of going out to take pictures three sessions a week until I turn. The value isn’t in individual images. It’s in the accumulation of intent.
AI can generate results. It cannot accumulate meaning.
What AI Can’t Replace
- AI can’t miss a moment and think about it all the way home.
- It can’t doubt whether an image belongs in a project.
- It can’t choose restraint over volume.
- It can’t walk the same streets for years and see them change.
- It can’t decide that a photograph connects emotionally
Any story without struggle isn’t compelling. Not because suffering is noble, but because struggle reveals choice.
- Give me the quirks.
- Give me the near-misses.
- Give me the images that show their seams.
Final Thought
I’m not afraid of AI because it’s aiming at the wrong target.
It’s chasing perfection in a medium that was never about perfection to begin with.
Photography isn’t dying. It’s being clarified by AI not replaced.
And if you’re willing to embrace imperfection—to suck, consistently, and honestly—there has never been a better time to make photographs that actually matter.