The Beginner Photography Podcast

Honoring the Human Touch in a World of AI Photography with Shane Balkowitsch

• Raymond Hatfield

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#581 Shane Balkowitsch is a dedicated wet plate collodion photographer whose passion for history, authenticity, and the human experience shapes both his artwork and his views on the future of photography. In this episode, Shane shares the journey that led him from having no experience with a camera to mastering one of photography’s oldest analog processes—a craft involving silver on glass that dates back to 1851. He highlights how the permanence and tangible nature of wet plate images, created through capturing real light and human presence, starkly contrast with the ephemeral, intangible nature of digital and AI-generated images.

KEY TOPICS COVERED

  1. Defining Photography in the Age of AI - Shane and Raymond dissect the core of what makes an image a "photograph," highlighting the necessity of light, a subject, and a photosensitive medium or sensor. They underscore the risk of confusing AI-based image generation—which lacks these elements—with authentic photography, causing potential chaos in art, media, and historical documentation.
  2. Ethics, Ownership, and Historical Accuracy - Shane raises significant ethical concerns about AI training on billions of images without permission, including his own work, and questions who owns the resulting visuals. He warns about the dangers this presents to historical accuracy, imagining future scenarios where AI-generated portraits of people who never existed could mislead researchers or the public, blurring the line between fact and fiction.
  3. Terminology, Transparency, and the Future of Art - Shane advocates for distinct labeling of AI-generated imagery—suggesting terms like "promptography"—to prevent confusion and uphold the integrity of photography. He stresses the need for transparency so viewers know whether an image is a genuine photograph or an AI creation, believing that honesty and accurate terminology are essential as technology continues to evolve.

IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS & CONCEPTS

  • Wet Plate Collodion Photography: An early analog photographic process invented in 1851, involving capturing images on glass plates coated with chemicals sensitive to light. Shane’s work in this medium exemplifies photography’s physical, archival, and intentional qualities.

IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS & CONCEPTS

  1. What makes an image a photograph, and why does this distinction matter when considering AI-generated content?
  2. Should AI-generated images be considered art? If so, who holds the authorship—the prompt user or the AI?
  3. How might the widespread adoption of AI imagery change the way we perceive, document, or trust history?

RESOURCES:
Visit Shane Balkowitsch's Website - https://nostalgicglasswetplatestudio.zenfolio.com/
Follow Shane Balkowitsch on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/balkowitsch/

Sign up for your free CloudSpot Account today at www.DeliverPhotos.com

Connect with Raymond!


Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

Shane Balkowitsch:

All the images that I make are made out of pure silver. And what's beautiful about pure silver is that silver doesn't degrade. So these are the most archival photographs man has ever created. So when someone comes into my studio on a Friday and I take their portrait, I can honestly tell them that this photograph outlasts any other photograph ever taken of you in your life. It's the most beautiful photographic process man has ever invented, and it wasn't a good enough reason to abandon this. There's less than a thousand of us in the world that can pull off a wet plate today.

Hey, photo friends Raymond here, and welcome to the Beginner Photography Podcast, where every Tuesday I drop a brand new episode to help you capture better photos through learning from some of the world's most creative photographers. And here on Thursdays, I share a rewind episode, a past conversation handpicked just because it is as valuable today as it was when it first aired. So whether you're brand new or you're revisiting with fresh and more experienced ears, this episode is packed with timeless photo wisdom to help you grow behind the lens. In today's rewind episode, we are chatting with wet plate photographer Shane Boic about the implications and challenges of AI generated imagery in the world of photography. But first, the Beginner Photography Podcast is brought to you by Clouds Spot. Clouds Spot has everything you need to build a thriving photography business, impress your clients, deliver a professional experience, and streamline your workflow all in one platform. So grab your free forever account today over@deliverphotos.com. So today's guest, Shane Koic, is a web plate photographer, meaning, he shoots using an almost 200 year old photographic process that captures images on glass. Now, I'm sure that, you know, when you think of old timey photography, you can kind of picture it in your head. But when you see one of these plates, when you hold one, there's this magical feeling, knowing that that light had reflected off of the person or the scene and it hit that exact plate that you are holding or looking at and, recorded it, ready to be archived for hundreds of years. And we contrast that with the prevalence of AI images that we see today. Things that never happened with people or places that never existed. So today we talk a lot about what photography truly is, and we talk about the ethical considerations as well. And we talk about the clear need for a way to differentiate between real human created photographs and AI generated images as well. Now there is no putting the genie back in the bottle at this point, so my hope is that this interview is gonna help you to think about your decisions as a photographer, and ways that you can introduce more authenticity into your images, so that you can contribute. Humanity, whether it is the entire world or it's just yourself and your family. Also, real quick, pat on the back to you, because you know that there is an ability to create AI images and despite that, you're still drawn to photography, right? For one reason or another. Maybe it's, the people, maybe it's the mental clarity that you get when shooting. Maybe it's the act of just creating with a tool in your hand, you know, whatever it is. But in the same way that people didn't just stop painting after photography was invented, there's always going to be a place for photography. So with that, let's go ahead and get on into today's rewind interview with Shane Baic.

Raymond Hatfield:

Shane, last time you were on, we talked a lot about your, photography, getting into wet plates and whatnot. There have been a lot of new listeners since last time you were on. So before we get into today's episode, can you just kind of remind me and listeners kind of how you got your journey into a unconventional form of photography?

Shane Balkowitsch:

Yeah, one of the oldest analog photography processes known to man. It's a wet plate collodion photography was invented in 1851 by Frederick Scott Archer back in 2012. I never even owned a camera. I saw a wet plate online and, I just, Asked the photographer what was that he said it's a wet plate. I don't know what about it attracted me to this I'd never had owned a camera never had any interest in photography whatsoever And I said that I would like to do that and he had been a photographer. His name's paul deloreanz He's a great guy and and he said well, are you a photographer shana said no, I don't own a camera And he said, Well, there's no way a non photographer will ever teach himself wet plating. And within 45 days of that conversation, I had made my first exposure. And here I am about 11 years into this journey of, chasing this analog photography.

Raymond Hatfield:

I know when you tell me that this is analog photography, I kind of laugh because like, it is as analog as it gets, right? Like you, you almost just, just breezed over that. It's the other end of the spectrum. Right, exactly. Like, even more so than film photography. So, again, for those listening who might not know what wet plate is, can you just talk about the intensive steps that are involved, just To be able to capture and exposure.

Shane Balkowitsch:

Yeah. So this, you have to put yourself in, the Victorian era. You have to think about, Abraham Lincoln had his web taken, if that gives you an idea. So you see, um, every once in a while, you'll watch a Western where the guy will have a magnesium shooter, where it goes pop like that. And he's taking a picture of someone that it was new technology. That's about 1905. Okay. This process was 55 years before that. So you, you have to, I'm making silver on glass. images. So all the images that I make are made out of pure silver. And what's beautiful about pure silver is that silver doesn't degrade. So these are the most archival photographs man has ever created. So when someone comes into my studio on a Friday and I take their portrait, I can honestly tell them that this photograph outlasts any other photograph ever taken of you in your life. And we abandoned this in 1885 for why humans abandoned a lot of things, um, for something more convenient, dry plating came around and, the photographer didn't have The poor, messy chemicals onto a plate to get the bromide salts to pull silver out of a silver nitrate bath and make a photosensitive plate. So I'm essentially making for some of your listener making sheet film on stained glass. And, we just abandoned this in 1885. And in my opinion, I'm. And I'm, like I said, down this rabbit hole, 11 years, it was, it's the most beautiful photographic process man has ever invented, and it wasn't a good enough reason to abandon this. And there's, there's less than a thousand of us in the world that can, pull off a wet plate today. So, I've got, works at 68 different museums around the world, including the Smithsonian, the library of Congress, the herd museum, the Royal photographic society over there with you, that's the oldest photographic society in the world, they have two of my plates, so it's been a wild journey. And, I'm just honored to be able to, uh, Um, and I'm very grateful for that. When I first started, I never had. And I thought that anyone would be interested in what I had to say or any of my work. I was just taking photographs with my family. And then it just kind of snowballed into what it is today. And I'm very grateful.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah. so finding reason, a purpose, a why in your photography, has definitely served you well. Right? your subjects. Do you think that you would still be shooting wet plates if you didn't have the same, Why of capturing Native Americans with this same process?

Shane Balkowitsch:

I think it's the, it's the whole, hook of history that I, I'm really fascinated with. I, I like making these, these are objects, understand when we use our digital cameras and I use, I don't own any other camera, by the way, the only other camera I have is my iPhone. So, but when I, you know, open the shutter on, we, we should explain to your listeners as well. So the shutter on your iPhone's open for about one 60th of a second on average, these are 10 second exposure. So it's 600 times longer to make a wet plate than it is with a modern day phone. Um, so, my Native American thing, Northern Plains Native Americans and modern wet plate perspective is just, I consider it my life's work, but, I'm in love with the fact that I'm, capturing light at any particular time. And that light is put in pure silver on something that is going to be here long after I'm gone.

Raymond Hatfield:

And

Shane Balkowitsch:

there's something magical about that. We just, there's something about the fact that. These images, I'm making something that's very permanent. And, if I label the plate properly on the back and put the date and the plate number and who the subject is and where the photo goes taken and the F stops or whatever I want to put on the back, that record is going to be here long after I'm gone.

Raymond Hatfield:

It's a very cool thing. You know, we as photographers love to, you know, the trope is to capture memories, it is, you can't get any longer of a memory to preserve then, then, because I, because I've

Shane Balkowitsch:

got, historical examples, just a couple of feet from me here on the shelf and they look as good today as they did 170 years ago, which, I mean, if you have, you know, if you go to your mother's, shoe box of photographs, which I know your mother probably has a shoe box for, you can, she gave them all to me. I have them all. And there you can look. Terrible condition and they're in terrible condition, right? And they're only 40 years old. So, you know, these are, it's a magnificent process. And, and silver, you know, it's, I tell the students that I have college students and I have about eight different classes come out every year. Hundreds of students come out to my studio. They'll see this process firsthand. And then I, I tell the students, if you put a silver spoon on the ground and you come back 500 years from now, what's on the ground and the answer must be a silver spoon. And that, that's, that speaks to the permanence of these images. it's the polar opposite of digital, you know, our topic today is artificial intelligence, AI and, and stuff like that. So I'm, I'm as old school. My process is as old school as it gets.

Raymond Hatfield:

So. Then why are we talking about a I today?

Shane Balkowitsch:

I made my living in technology. So I noticed that this new technology, artificial intelligence, and I, it hasn't, it's been on my radar for a couple of years. So I've done a deep dive into this and I've read many books and I've listened to many podcasts of the world's experts about this, this technology and stuff and, and AI, a lot of people think AI is this is a new thing, right? I mean, they were discussing in the 1950s. So this isn't a new thing. It's just Now in the 2020s, we were able to actually have the technology to do some of the things that they knew that we were going to be able to do back in the 1950s. And so I was on Instagram and I started seeing these images and thought they were fantastic. I was seeing these images pop up and pop up and these people were making these different images. And then I noticed that they started calling these photographs. Here's a photograph. Here's an AI photograph. And I'm at that point. My gut told me, hold on a minute. this is not right. We need to draw some kind of line here in the sand that says that these aren't photographs. And so I, you know, I've written three articles for Petapixel. The first one was about how, these are not photographs that in order to be a photograph, you have to Use light and you have to use a photosensitive material or a sensor, you know, if we want to talk about your modern day, listeners and stuff. And, none of that is happening with AI photography. So then I dove in deeper and how is it doing this? And I learned about the diffusion and how it takes images and then it diffuses them and adds a bunch of static. And then comes out of the static and then it judges that result and then makes decisions. And then gives you back what it thinks you want to see. And, so I, started saying, The people that are making these images need to have their own terminology. Like photography is photography and it shouldn't have to encompass things, other technologies that it's not, right? I mean, it's, it's not, gas car is not a horse and we need to come up with our own term. They need to come up with their own terminology. And, you know, I had thrown out in that article, what I come up with is prompted artificial graphic design was, an acronym that I had come up with. And other people have come up with promptology and promptography. And there's, I mean, there's a million different things, but I do see that they're now, since I made that argument that we need to have terminology that surrounds us. So we understand what we're talking about and that everyone who's viewing these things understands what it is we're viewing. I think that's very important. Okay. Because these aren't photographs and this, this process you understand a year ago. Raymond, you would look at an portrait, let's just say, cause I'm a portrait person. So let's talk about portraits. You'd look at an AI portrait and you would just kind of laugh. There was like three ears and, 12 fingers and, things like that. And things were wonky. Everything was wonky a year ago. And then six months ago, it's not so wonky. And now just recently, it's really not wonky. Yeah. And, I'm predicting by the end of the year that. You know, even the trained eye, a trained expert, I, a trained photographer, or historian will not be able to tell the difference between something that was artificially created and something that, it was real. And as, and a historian is a person that's trying to document Native Americans or the person that's trying just to document the people in my life around here. I mean, that's what my work is, right? it's a reflection of the times. Around my studio of, the people here. And, it really, I push back on this, that let's stop calling this photography, come up with your own terms, call it, whatever you want, just let's stop talking, calling it photography. And, and a lot of people have really, gotten behind that, that this is the, everyone is, you know, not everyone, but a lot of people are acknowledging now, but if you go to Instagram today and type in AI photography, You know, last week there was 178, 000 people that disagreed with that concept. So there's 178, 000

Raymond Hatfield:

AI

Shane Balkowitsch:

photographs

Raymond Hatfield:

and

Shane Balkowitsch:

they're not photographs at all.

Raymond Hatfield:

And

Shane Balkowitsch:

asked an AI artist, I said, why are you using the word photograph? They said, well, it's just a marketing thing. That's what people relate to is that you got to call it what you think. It is or what it's like. And I'm like, I said, that's not a good reason. It's you're, you're calling an apple and orange. And, that doesn't work. And we need to respect the field of photography. And, that was my big first push. My big, article was on, uh, Photographs are not photographs. They're they're images. They're graphic designs or whatever you want to kick. Come up with a name for them, but they're definitely not photographs. I even had someone on Facebook. You get the craziest article, ideas sometimes when you're making statements and you're asking for, I'm, I'm trying not to be in a bubble, right? I'm trying to like put my ideas out there and get feedback from people. And this one gentleman told me that it's a photograph because computers use fiber optics. And the fiber optics Use light. Use light,

Raymond Hatfield:

light. Oh my gosh. So

Shane Balkowitsch:

the, so this is, this was the reasoning. That he justified calling it a photograph. If you can about, I mean, if you talk about a stretch, right?

Raymond Hatfield:

That's about as

Shane Balkowitsch:

stretched out as you get, but that's, I mean, that's, some of the stuff that I've been, I've been dealing with and I, and I should tell your listeners, I'm not against AI at all. I have friends that are even web plate artists that actually, Make a I images and I love them. I think they're fantastic. the other thing that we have to worry about, Raymond is, well, what are we going to do with these images? what's the purpose of them really, you know, it was an argument. I had a TEDx talk about six years ago and, and I asked why are we taking all these digital photographs? it just seems like a bunch of information that nobody, we're only looking at it on our little screens. Nobody's doing prints anymore. Right. I mean, we're not doing exhibitions of our iPhone photographs. I mean, but we're, we take more digital photographs today than the first 150 years of photography. I don't know if I mentioned that in the first podcast that we did. So why are we, what are we doing with these? Okay. We're seeing them on Instagram. We're seeing them on Facebook. We're sharing them. We're kicking them back and forth and, oh, that's beautiful and stuff. But, is someone gonna, you're going to have an exhibition and, and there, there will be some exhibitions. I have no doubt that there will be exhibitions and this will be curated work and so forth. But I mean, are people gonna, let's go back to portraiture. Okay. There was a photograph that a friend of mine did of a young girl, an AI photograph. She does not exist. She never existed and she will never exist. And so I have to ask myself, will someone in the future? And that was my second article on this topic. Was talking about how this is going to affect our history. Will someone in the future actually think if they get ahold of that, because once you put it on the web, we know what happens with it, right? It's got a life of its own. Someone could stumble upon this picture of this redheaded young girl and think that she was actually somebody, somebody who felt pain and had love and died. and all the things that us humans do all the. the human aspects of why I think I love photography, like that. It's the human element of why, why am I with portraiture? And I'm not taking pictures of pine trees, right? I mean, there's something about looking at a photograph of someone from 170 years ago. There's something there. there's a relationship between the present and the past. and I can understand, I can try to understand who that person was. you don't have that with this. So this, girl could end up Maybe her photograph's curated at a museum, and they thought that she was someone else, or, I mean, she doesn't have a name, and then there's the whole argument of, who's the artist? is it the person just prompting? Are they, are they the artist, or is it The, are we ready to give the artificial intelligence it's due and, say that it owns the rights. And I don't know if your listeners know, but if you read through the terms of these, mid journey and so forth like that, these different applications, you do not have the rights to any of the output. Okay. So the, the prompter does not have the rights to any of the output. So that's, the first time that's happened, right? Like when, as an artist. Let me ask you, when is the last time you knew of an artist that made something that didn't have the rights to? When has that ever occurred before?

Raymond Hatfield:

never that I can think of. I mean, even that time that that monkey took a photo with a camera, that monkey still got the ownership of that image. So

Shane Balkowitsch:

never. So the, the terms of these, all these applications, so you're making, say you want to do an exhibition, you want to do some, or is someone going to buy that a print? Of that fake AI girl and hang it on their wall, right? Yeah. That's the

Raymond Hatfield:

question. Yeah.

Shane Balkowitsch:

Am I going to sell it to who their mother, their father? I mean, so then it goes back to the logical question is, is so what's the purpose? Right? why did we bring this into the world?

Raymond Hatfield:

So let me ask you a question then, because I think one of the problems that we're having, with describing these AI images, is one, because they, they look photorealistic. and we just don't have the, the, the. Language yet to describe, you know what it properly is. but also, when it comes to these images, I want to know, because the other, conversation that's being had around a lot of this is, is any of this art, right? Because if it is, is AI creating art? because apparently it is, if it owns the rights to it, you know, all, all these weird legal questions. So from your standpoint, Okay. I know that we can get, you know, technical definitions out of a dictionary, but how do you define art?

Shane Balkowitsch:

Yeah, and I wrote a third article for Petticoat. So that that was sort of the first article was about these aren't photographs. The second was about how it's going to affect their history. And the third one, can we consider this art? I don't want to be in the situation where I'm the guy that's The gatekeeper to what's art, right? I mean, we've, you know, in that article, I gave some very good examples of, the banana tape to the duct tape to the wall that's sold for 120, 000, right? in the early 1900s an artist came into a gallery and submitted a urinal and said that this is art. They just wanted to put it on a pedestal and said that this urinal is art. And, there was a lot of debate there. So there's, there's all these examples in the past, where, people were questioning whether or not these things are art. And, I don't know whether or not they're art. and we, we gave in the article, I had a co writer. we gave the pros and cons to both things. But we just couldn't be in the situation where we're saying that this is an art. I like, I just, I can't find myself telling someone else. What art is and what art is not so sure. But with the ai question is is who's the owner and who's creating this?

Raymond Hatfield:

No, no, no. No, I now we're going too far. I want to know what is your definition of art? That's what I want to know like when you see something and because I think that we can all agree that when you see art You know that it's art, but sometimes it's hard to put into words, right? So when you see something that you think, this is art, how would you define that?

Shane Balkowitsch:

Well, I think it's anytime an artist decides to put labor into something and to actually bring something and, and to say, this is what I created. And then we can take whatever we want. Away from that, it's the intent, right? Was it, was there an intent there? If a banana just got taped to a wall just for some reason and it wasn't the artist saying, well, I taped this to the wall and this is a piece of art. There's a difference between that, right? Like you wouldn't call that art, but then you have the intent of the artist saying, yeah, this is my art. And he stood by that and the piece sold. It's about intent, and I understand that it's the intent. Of these prompting these people that are prompting the AI to give them things. who's actually creating it. We got to let your listeners know that these images, are being constructed from billions of other images from other artists. And this is without permission. I went to a website and I found out over 30 of my Native American works were in the, in the training of AI. And there was no permission. There was no, um, Oh, we're going to give you some kind of compensation. There was no, none of that. It just was, they trained, their algorithms on my work and, and billions of other, photographers work. And, that's where it's, it's coming up with that. I had this interesting, it occurred to me, Like, how much control do we have over this ai? So I put out this AI challenge about a month ago where I had an idea of a, of, I did a piece, of a, a woman with a moon head. Okay? So we, my prop master made this moon, and it's called the waning. And, you can find it on, on, maybe on Facebook. So I asked everyone if this was your idea. This was what, as the artist. I asked all the artists if this was your what you had in your mind. This is because when I create something, like when I would make that, I knew what I wanted to get to. Like I chased these things. I have before I pour the chemicals on the plate, I know what I'm going after, right? Like I have this idea and sometimes it turns out, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I get something I don't, I wasn't expecting. Sometimes I get exactly what I was expecting, but I know what I want. So I, I asked artists, AI artists to take up the challenge of if this is what is in your mind that you wanted to create. Create it with AI. And what we found out is that there's not enough control of the AI at this point to get anywhere near what it is that we were trying to get to. So the AI just, you prompt it and it gives you something back and it may give you 10 different results back and then you say, oh, I like that one the best. You click on that and then you can prompt it further and you can continue to tweak it and tweak it and tweak it. But it's all this, this whole thing is about, How the AI gives you what it thinks you want to see. And then us as humans, we say, Oh, that's what I wanted to see. But that's, that's not what you wanted to see at all. And you really, you gotta take what it gives you and you don't really, you can't specifically say, I want this. And even if you feed in photographs that you're taking yourself and try to get to, something reasonable that you had in your mind, a that you had. It's just the AI, it doesn't know how to get there. There's no method by which you can prompt it to get exactly what, what you're trying to find, but it will give you something that it thinks you want to see. And then we just accept it as, Oh, that's what I wanted.

Raymond Hatfield:

I know, uh, I've been at weddings before where, I unintentionally took a photo. Maybe I was moving the camera or something and that photo turned out to be one of my favorites and the couple's favorite, which sometimes makes me ask the question as well because it's the intention. And I see where you're coming from. And in large, I also agree with you because, I've said many times that the difference between, a snapshot and a photograph is intention. Um, in how you frame the image in waiting for the right moment to happen in how you control the light coming in, you know, any of these aspects.

Shane Balkowitsch:

Yes.

Raymond Hatfield:

but there are times where I have an unintentional, uh, happy

Shane Balkowitsch:

accident,

Raymond Hatfield:

a happy accident, you know, I love it. And I struggle with, answering myself. Sometimes is this Art. And then I think at the end of the day, I've never really had to worry about this because I guess I've never just been challenged on what is art more so than what we have in recent months, right? because of AI. but going back to what you were saying about, you know, like how you had this idea in your head. You then started putting steps into place, right? You, you contacted a prop master. This is what I need. You contacted a model. This is when I need you, you got the, you know, you got everything ready to take that photo and you got it. When it comes to AI and all those people putting in prompts to try to get something similar to what you had created and they weren't able to. Do you think that that is just a problem that we have today, and that in future iterations we'll have more control over it, or do you think that fundamentally it'd be like telling my child to draw something that I see in my head, and of course it's never going to come out exactly how I see it? That's a big question right there.

Shane Balkowitsch:

It's a big question. it's using billions of images, so it's being influenced by these images. It can only give us something back from what it's been trained on, like what it knows, right? It knows the images that were that were put. So it has a limited number of inputs that it that it's working with. But what we do know that this is going to be getting better. Raymond, this is going to continue to get better. The technology is going to get better. The interfaces, the By which you interact with this artificial intelligence, that's going to get better. So, there's other tools. So they're, they're laying tools on top of this, this general prompting. So there's this melding of additional tools to give, people more and more, control over it. I just don't want to be the guy that's. Set tells someone what is art and what is not. It just doesn't. No, of course. Yeah. It just seems like not a place that I want to be. Do I see that there could be, you know, this is a new genre of, art. We can just call it a new genre of art. And that they have their own, they describe it properly. Everyone is saying, well, this is what it is. It's AI. but to get people. To do that, they're just not being honest. there was a group about a photographer and I won't even say that about a historical photographer that died in 2004, but he had, this group has 145, 000 followers. Okay. So this was a, a street photographer that was very well known and someone presented a portrait of this said 18 years. And I looked at it and I thought right away, this is not a portrait of this photographer, like this is ai. So I did a, a quick, I went out to 10 I, which, you know, there's these reverse image lookups and I looked, is this image of this very, you know, it's, it's like a portrait of David Bowie. Like there's not many photographs of David Bowie that are gonna come on the scene Yeah. That people have not seen. Right. Like we know there's not a lot of that. And this guy's even more obscure than David Bowie. So the fact that there's this, this photograph of him and sure enough, that image has never appeared in like 8 billion websites. So the image was created by AI and, of a man that existed. And I just want to think that, what would he think of that? Like, is it ethical? And I don't mean to get too serious here, but is it ethical to bring a portrait of a man into the public eye? 2023 when he died 14 years ago, right? From a historical aspect is his family would they be happy about this? Would he be happy about this? Are you going to is that image somehow? You know the the key words his name gets associated with that and someone maybe in the future thinks That that's actually it was a portrait of him on a specific day when yeah, he had no part of that

Raymond Hatfield:

I understand exactly what you're saying. And I know that, you know, like you said, this is more of an obscure, figure, right? Especially than David Bowie, but I think we all, it's hard to get less obscure than David Bowie, but, when it comes down to the ethics of, of the photograph here in this situation, somebody might say, Okay. Very few people know exactly who this person is, but I think therein lies the danger, right? Because it doesn't have to happen to that person. But, the danger could be that, that now we're, creating these images of people who, are public facing. Of things that, uh, never happened. Exactly. And if we called it a photograph, we're immediately going to believe that it's rooted in reality.

Shane Balkowitsch:

That's the problem. Okay. Because I've seen the argument, Raymond, I've seen the argument. Well, people do a painting of David Bowie and he's been dead. Like, it's the same thing. It's not the same thing. Okay. Sure. It's being presented as a photograph and we humans. We know what a photograph is all about. We know that it's a record of some light at a specific nanosecond of time, right? it was that person was sitting there, like was bouncing off their face. And we captured that light in some photo sense of material. was never a deception. So when you do a painting, I've got a painting, a young college student did a painting of David Bowie. I've got one in my, at my office. It's not the same thing. This was a black and white. So they made it black and white as well, because that's the, most of his work was black and white. It was presented that this is a photograph of so and so, and it wasn't a photograph of so and so, and I think there's a problem with that. And I assume, and so you're right, we think of photographs as being truth. And then I'll say that and then someone will come back. I've heard all the arguments. I've heard the arguments like William Mortensen, my favorite photographer of all time. It's the 1920s was putting witches flying in the sky, right? Like there was no witch flying in the sky that he captured, but he took a photograph of the houses, the skyline. And then he took a photograph of a muse sitting on a broomstick and, you know, in his studio and he combined them together and made a collage and made this. Beautiful, fantastic, nude witch flying across the sky. I get it that that's no reality. but it's rooted in reality. It's all of those things. Yes. She existed. The naked witch was a person. And she sat in front of him and those are real houses. Like I saw an example yesterday. I mean, we should talk a little bit about this generative fill on the Photoshop. But you've maybe played with this yet.

Raymond Hatfield:

I haven't played with it, but I've seen lots of examples of it. Yeah. I just don't see a, a use for it. So aside from just trying to make it amazing,

Shane Balkowitsch:

a guy took, he composed a shot of New York City, a skyline, and then thought, well, instead of having a portrait, I'm going to make it landscape. So he just asked the AI to fill left to right about 20 percent of both sides. And the A. I. put these fake buildings in.

Raymond Hatfield:

One of the most iconic skyscrapers ever.

Shane Balkowitsch:

You have this, you know what I mean, you have Central Park, and you have all this stuff going on, and you know that building, you know that building, you know that building, and then all of a sudden on the sides, there's these buildings that have never existed and will never exist. And I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means for history. I don't know what that means for photography. And, And I think there's another thing happened here that I haven't talked about yet, but I think there's, some playing with different technologies and people are calling things AI when it's. It's not really probably a neural network actually doing some of the stuff there. using technologies and everyone's now, everyone's wanting to say that this is, this is AI.

Raymond Hatfield:

And,

Shane Balkowitsch:

and the fact is, unless you went there and saw their, their servers you got proof that there's a neural network that was doing this sleight of hand stuff, we don't even know that this. Some of the stuff is legitimately artificial intelligence, right, right there. I know that that's happening. I know that people are, trying to scam off other technologies and say, you know, this is artificial intelligence and there's no neural network or, you know, there's no deep, deep mind involved at all. because those are specific things you have to have. There has in order for it to be artificial intelligence, there has to be a certain kind of computer, set up and I know that that's happening, that people are saying, Oh, look, you know, this is backed by AI and they're, they're using all. So it's this new shiny thing that everyone, you know, this little, if I get a period, I period somewhere in my search, people are going to start looking at it. Right. there's that problem as well, but, yeah. I'm not sure the generative Phil thing is, is, and I got in an argument with a guy this just this week. And you know, it's like, get it in camera. And then, if you want to manipulate with Photoshop, we know that it's not the same thing. You actually started with a real photograph. There was actually real photograph and then you manipulate, okay, I get that. I get that. but this is not that at all. You're not starting with any kind of reality.

Raymond Hatfield:

I see what you're saying. And it's funny cause, for a long time in, weddings when I would do, I would create a, essentially it's a collage. it's a series of photos that I would take during the first kiss. Um, say, I don't know, 50. 80 photos, right? Telephoto lens, just small portion. Take me weeks down. Yeah. It's, it's a lot of, yeah, that's a month's worth of exposure time on what played there. And then I take all those photos, but I bring them into Photoshop and then create photo stitch. And there's always an option to, I forget exactly what it's called, but like, uh, content aware, fill in the edges, because as you can imagine, as it changes the perspective, there's some, it's not perfectly square. wrestled with myself on that of whether, it's okay or not. But anyway, I feel like that is kind of the same technology because that's been around for a long time. Like, what is the difference between this content aware fill and this generative fill? And that I'm not sure. So maybe that goes back to that whole, is it really AI or is it just, you know, things around there. But, regardless, let's, stick back to this, this whole conversation about photography And figuring out kind of what you would like to see, because, it's one thing to talk about it. it's one thing to recognize a problem. How does the problem get fixed?

Shane Balkowitsch:

Well, one of the things that I proposed in the article, was that there has to be some kind of identifier. Like, it may be baked into the data file, okay? But that all quickly falls apart. So, if it's an AI generated image, there's some kind of identifier in the file that you don't see. It doesn't have to be a watermark, something like that, but it has to be something that like Google can identify. This is artificial intelligence. I can't put this on the front page of the New York times. You know what I mean? Like this is, we know that this is AI, but you know, the way technology works is, I mean, we can just grab screen grabs. And as soon as you grab a screen, right. No metadata, nothing comes with it. Yeah. It becomes sterile. That's a problem. You know, the, the one thing I wanted is I wanted people to have, you know, to be honest about what, what it is that we're seeing it. I got, I have no aversion to AI images when someone says, AI course, or, you know what I mean? Like I have no aversion whatsoever. It's like, Oh, cool. Great. I mean, you know what I mean? Like I have no aversion. What's the point? But whatever. Yeah. But it's when it's, it's the no honesty that I really have a problem. And I don't know how we're going to fix it. I don't know if you know that, the AI now can remove watermarks from photographs. Did you see this? Right. Yeah. It takes like four seconds. So Getty Images just filed a lawsuit in the United Kingdom trying to demand, this AI company from this, software. So in, in four seconds, so you can just grab any photograph from it, Getty Images, and put it in the AI and say, well, I just want this, I want this gone. the new, um, generative field thing for Photoshop is gonna fix that Same thing too. Right? So now all of a sudden the, so the traditional way of identifying and protecting one's intellectual property. It's like stripped away and, there's people that have deep pockets like Getty that thinks that this isn't right. It feels kind of like, what was it back when, when they first started stealing music? What was the name of that? That's sir. Napster. Napster. Remember when Napster came on and everyone was up in arms. And then the. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The industry came out and there was things put in place, but then we end up with something like Napster anyway, with the other services that are out there anyway. But, at least they were done with contracts and at least some of the artists are being compensated somewhat. There's arguments that they're not being compensated quite enough. And I agree with that, but, at least, it feels kind of like the Napster era, right? Like it feels like, okay, this is the wild west. now we can just, we're just stealing people's photographs and we're you putting them in a database that we're using that database to, to generate other images. and then we're giving those rights away to the AI or to the, application, or we're giving it to the person that just prompted four words. Jackson Pollock's a perfect example, right. Of arguing if something was art, right. Like when he came on the scene, you know, he was just splash and paint and what did everyone say. my two year old could do that. Yeah. Like this is an art, right? These are not new conversations, right? And then, you know, his pieces go on to sell for millions of dollars. Yeah. And he created an entire new genre of, painting. So it kind of, it, it's not like we, I've heard the argument, all this has happened before Shane, you're making a big deal about this. I hear this all the time and it just doesn't feel like this is that. And that's all I can say. It just. This doesn't feel like this is that, not at this level, not at this, this cowboy kind of wild west kind of show where everything's okay and we can just deceive anyone.

Raymond Hatfield:

I think that the fundamental problem there is that when it comes to Jackson Pollock, obviously defining art is personal, right? However you define art is going to be the viewer else to find, right? Yeah. But. When we see a painting, we know that that's a painting. When we see a photograph, we know that that's a photograph. until this point, say, you know. so, when there were other technologies that came along, just from painting to photography, there was a lot of backlash. There was a lot of, or not backlash, criticism, right? Like, this is an art, this is, you know, simply a mechanical process, right? It's not there's no artistic vision that goes into creating this, which today we fully, accept that photography is an art form. But I think the issue here goes back to the problem that we started with, is that we don't have a definition for what this is, we don't have a name for what this is, and because we don't have a name for what it is, it doesn't feel different

Shane Balkowitsch:

for a

Raymond Hatfield:

lot of people, and that's what's so hard, that is what is so hard, if it was https: otter. ai I don't know. vision images, whatever it is that you want to call it. But something more, defined, something that's not as broad as just images. But we understand the point. We would understand, what's going on. And we would understand that fundamentally this is different, but because it is so photorealistic or can be so photorealistic, that's the challenge that we need to answer. And, I don't know how we're going to do that. I hope that we can come up with something. And the only thing that I can think of is, similar to what Apple did when they introduced their live photos, on the iPhone, they didn't call it something else. They called it live. Photos. So even though it has the word photo in there, we see it as something entirely different when you watch it. You don't say to yourself, that's a photograph, but you don't say that's a video. It's a lie. It's an entirely different name. And that is what we're missing here. Definitions are important. So important. So we make an impact? How do we get this started?

Shane Balkowitsch:

Well, we just start to raise an awareness and letting people know about, you know, that these different concerns that we shouldn't just, uh, I'm trying to understand what people have invested in it. Why are people up in arms to protect this? Like the bias, calling

Raymond Hatfield:

it a photograph.

Shane Balkowitsch:

Yeah. Or calling it or just to protect it in general. Like if you see anything against the eye, you're just, like I said, you're just a Luddite. You don't like technology and you're just an, you're an old man by definition and you just don't understand where the world's going. has nothing to do with that. I mean, think about the photojournalism. We need to have a base of reality. In our news stories and stuff like that, if we start manipulating everything, we won't know what ends up and, it's a problem. I've just been on the bandwagon of just trying to, you know, write some articles. I've been, you know, the AI challenge that I put out there. probably once or twice a week. I'm thinking about AI and I'm seeing new things come up and new problems that may be arising from this. And, is it going to be a fad? I don't, I'm not sure. Raymond, is this just going to be, you know, are people are going to get bored with, just like typing in a computer and having something come back? I just, I don't know what the purpose of it's for, other than to see something. Unless there's some like dopamine thing that you're getting, like, it's like a slot machine, right? It's that sound of the coins falling out of the slot machine. You pull the lever, you hear the coins hit the bottom of the tray and you get that dopamine rush. I, I'm not sure, but, but we're making more images than

Raymond Hatfield:

we've

Shane Balkowitsch:

You know, just information glut. And this is just now. We don't even know, what reality is. And I get the point that Photoshop, you know, and this is that was an argument years ago, right? How long? So right up at around 20 years. This is going to ruin photography. This just does not seem like that. This just seems like that on steroids and, I could be, I'm perfectly okay being wrong with this. I said that before the show, I'm perfectly okay being wrong about these, these concerns and stuff. Here's the thing. I hope I am wrong. That would be awesome. Right. That would be awesome that I'm completely wrong and that I just I miss this fundamental wonderful thing that's gonna reshape art and photography and it's gonna take, creation to another level. I don't know how you can take creation to another level when, person is creating isn't the owner of of the object.

Raymond Hatfield:

Sure. Yeah, that is a big problem. That is a big problem that, whenever money is involved. You know, they're always going to win. The company is going to win. Uh, and that the only way that you can control, your creative output is for you to do it yourself. So fully understand that. But I think here's how people can become. More creative and just I've never created. Let me be clear. I've never created an image with anything like mid journey Or I've never because I've never had a need to create any sort of real photo realistic image but when I was in high school, I was just terrible with words and I had a book report to and I said, I'm not doing this. Like I'm absolutely not. I don't care if I get an F. I'm just so bad. It's almost embarrassing. Okay. But instead I decided to make a stupid little video with my friends showing off to my teacher that I, at least I understood the concepts within the book. My problem was putting it down in words. And from that moment on, he was like, You don't ever have to write a book report again, like just do video here. And I've always kind of had that issue with words. I can't put them together. Right. I can't, which is interesting that I talk on a podcast all the time, but I still feel like words are very difficult for me, especially organizing them in my head. And I will say that from a, Chad, GBT has taken all of the words that I've given it and the way that it organizes things, Is exactly how I imagined them being organized and it has helped me immensely in that way And has helped me create different creative pathways, I suppose So playing devil's advocate here. I'm only assuming and I hope that this is the case That there's a certain subset of people who are very good with words and not so much visual literacy And they're able to take these words and then turn it into something visual but again are they a writer? Because that's what they are good at, or is what they created something entirely different? Did they create that? And I go back to the, painter versus a photographer argument of photography is just a mechanical process. There's no artistic vision inside. And so. All you need is a technical understanding of how light works and you're gold. And I wonder if that's happening here. Like, if we're having a same moment in that aspect. Not that, not that these are the same images or the same result, but I'm wondering if, if we're just having an issue. In describing the tools that we're using. and that I think your

Shane Balkowitsch:

example is is a good example. I'm not taking away that the I can't do a miraculous things like can help people with learning disabilities. And I mean, I apologize if it came off that

Raymond Hatfield:

way. I didn't I didn't intend.

Shane Balkowitsch:

No, no, no, no, no. I'm just saying that There's examples of, you know, where we should talk about this, that we're talking about all the bad things with this and that it has all the, it has the promise to cure cancer out there. You know what I mean? The promise to get humans off this earth, right? I mean, these are huge things. I mean, it's already solved the protein folding problem that we thought we could never solve. So it has wonderful things, but we have to think that, if the downside outweighs the good. We have to ask ourselves, why, why are we just jumping in and in and maybe we just have to, enter this realm a little bit more safely or just with a little bit more caution. But I think as long as you have people that are willing to just try to deceive people, you know, you're going to see it. Yeah. You're going to see it in the news, their newsroom. You're going to see it in the photo journalism stuff. People are going to make stuff that aren't, isn't true. And they're going to start a narrative behind it. and,

Raymond Hatfield:

um, you know, how about we come to a close on a high note here. Okay. Because I know that this, feels to some people as, as if this is just pure doomsday and, you know, talking before we hit record, I know that you don't feel that way. I don't feel that way, even though there are concerns, like you said, we have to step into it a little bit more, but there are obviously exciting elements about AI. So, let me ask you the question. If we come up with a new definition of any sort of image that is created by AI, a new definition, it has a name, something entirely different. And it's widely accepted.

Shane Balkowitsch:

Are we done? I still think we have to address the stealing of images from artists. Previous army images. You have to understand Midjourney's using Leonardo Da Vinci stuff. He's using William Morton's stuff. It's using Picasso. It's using All these people, not just present day people, all the great masters chat GPTs using Shakespeare, these things have all been fed into it. And I think, that these AI companies, if they wouldn't have been such a rush to go to market, they could have done this properly. They could ask photographers, you know what I mean? If you have some photographs you don't really care about, can you give them to us? we'll give you a nickel a piece or a penny a piece, or maybe it had to be free. And people would have been more, you know, that people would have been more than happy. We're doing this new AI thing. Please give us your images. They would have gotten billions of images. They wanted the shortcut. They just wanted to strip the internet and take and not give the credit where the credit's due because without the input, you can't have the output. Sure. So this, AI. It's nothing mad. it doesn't have that creative spark. It doesn't have without, if you take all the images away from it, Midjourney can't do anything. So it needs those images and the people that need to be acknowledged that, provided those images, not just myself, Leonardo da Vinci needs to be acknowledged. Jackson Pollock, he's in there. I mean, there's everyone. Is in there. And, I think if it goes back to just honesty and, I don't have any problem with AI, I think there's going to be some big changes, for photography. Here's just think about this. No more sets, no more props, no more lighting, no more camera, no more photographer. I don't like that. It seems like we're cutting some things out, right? we're losing something. These are all the things that you no longer need. and you're making imagery, which it's not a problem. Just tell me that what, that's what it is. Just tell me that it's, it was AI generated. And then I know the method. It's like taking a charcoal painting and seeing it's a photograph, right? Right. Right. Yeah. It's like taking a charcoal painting and saying, well, this is a photograph and you look at it, you go like, that's not, but the problem we're going to have is that they're going to get so darn good.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah.

Shane Balkowitsch:

At this. That we're not going to be able to detect it.

Raymond Hatfield:

Okay, so then final question here. Image theft aside, right? I know that's a huge aside Right, but it is the stealing of millions of images but billions the billions of images. Let's put that aside for just a moment

Shane Balkowitsch:

Okay,

Raymond Hatfield:

Many professionals are worried that AI is going to take their job. And in fact, I've talked about this on the podcast. I think next year, the first product will probably come to market where a bride and a groom can just upload selfies that they took on their wedding day into some sort of, AI type tool. And now they have world class images of their wedding without a wedding. I hate

Shane Balkowitsch:

to tell this to you, Raymond, that's already been done. Okay. Well, then there we go. It's already been done. So you can upload a photograph of you and your bride. And you can place you and your bride in any tuxedo, in any wedding dress, in any location in the world. I got married here in Bismarck, North Dakota, but now I can get married in Bali.

Raymond Hatfield:

Right. Yes. And I didn't have

Shane Balkowitsch:

to get on a plane.

Raymond Hatfield:

are those photographs going to

Shane Balkowitsch:

mean to my children? what is that going to mean? You know, what's again, keep coming back to this. What's the purpose?

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah. What is the point? I get it. I get it. I just think that there's a lot of people who don't value photography or, I hate to say authentic or true images, because as we know that there's some ambiguity in that, uh,

Shane Balkowitsch:

let's go positive again. Let's just say that this AI is going to drive the importance of what we, you and I do. It's going to reality

Raymond Hatfield:

based authentic photography. Yes. Yes.

Shane Balkowitsch:

That at some point that is, it's this, new shiny object is just going to be tossed aside for what it is and people are going to want to come back. let's just say, I think that's a positive. I think that that's it. So we can draw that line that people are going to have more appreciation for what I do here in my studio, getting that moon and getting the prop and getting the lighting. And you know, it, took us three months. Yeah. It took us three months to get that shot. And guess how many exposures I made. I spent three months on the prop and getting everything ready in the model and everything together to exposures

Raymond Hatfield:

to exposures. Yeah, that's

Shane Balkowitsch:

what it took. I took two exposures.

Raymond Hatfield:

So do you think that you only took two exposures because you knew in your head exactly what that image wanted when

Shane Balkowitsch:

I got it?

Raymond Hatfield:

I

Shane Balkowitsch:

got it. You got it. Yeah, I don't need the glut. I don't need to take, I don't need more, more is not better. And if we, you know, this is a beginning, photographers podcast, right? If I can just a little bit of, I'm not the greatest, expert in this field. Right. But if I can give a little bit to the listeners, they. Less is more. You don't have to take 4000 photographs at a wedding.

Raymond Hatfield:

Okay.

Shane Balkowitsch:

When I went and took the photograph of Greta Thunberg down at Standing Rock, I only had six clean glass plates in my box. That means I, you know, I'm telling you, Raymond, you get to go take Evander Holyfield's photograph like I took. Yeah, bring your camera. He's coming in at two o'clock. Guess what? Your camera's full and you only have room for six exposures. Yeah. And you have them for one hour. It sounds insanity. But when you work under those constraints, and you think about less is more. Someone argued today that just take you could just take as many. It was even on your own. I think you posted it a week or so ago. You said sometimes take more photographs. So you never know what's, the gem that you may find or you may shine. Do you remember doing that? There was something like, if you take more, I would like to argue, let's take less.

Raymond Hatfield:

And,

Shane Balkowitsch:

I think if you take less, you're going to spend more time on them. If you spend more time on them, you're going to get more of what you were looking for instead of just filling the camera up and sifting through, all these photographs to find that little gem. Because if you just. You know, turn that shutter open. It just captures a hundred photographs. you're back to this. Was it your hand stroke? Was it your brush stroke that got that one photograph? or was it just chance? It shouldn't be chance. It happens every once in a while. We talked about it. There's happy accidents in my studio all the time, but if there's the intent, if you go back to the intent, I think we'll all do better in photography.

Raymond Hatfield:

Follow up question. Devil's advocate here. And I'm going to make this real quick. Your latest photo that you took, is it better than your first wet plate photo that you took?

Shane Balkowitsch:

Absolutely.

Raymond Hatfield:

And the difference is?

Shane Balkowitsch:

The difference is, is that I think the more photographs I take, the less I like my work. Okay. The more photographs. No, that's true. This is, this is, there's a realization that I've come up to. So I've made 4, 714 plates in that in 11 years. That's how many explored. You would do that in a wedding. You could do that in a wedding.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Shane Balkowitsch:

Okay. It's taken me 11 years to make that many plates. I've realized that, my standards have changed and that I do. that moment where like, Oh, this is, this is exact. This is what I wanted. this is the magic, right? It's almost like the golfer hitting that hole in one, right? It's like, or that perfect swing. You hit it every once in a while. And you only have to hit it every once in a while. The more I take photographs, the less I like my work. And I think that that's a positive thing because it means my standards have changed right and that, when I first was starting, if I got my that photo, my first photograph, you just mentioned it, right? It's right there of my brother. It's, it's four feet from me. I'm hanging on the wall here. My first wet plate. I look at it, but I look at it with, you know, I look back at fondly, but, it was big leaps. But now it's these little baby steps that I got to, I'm fighting and kicking and scratching just to make that next improvement. And I think that's what it's all about in the end. So, and I don't think this is a process and I don't think even your, you know, digital photography, it's a process that you should ever feel comfortable that you mastered. You know what I mean? I, I've heard there's some trombone player that it was 98 years old and he had the world's best trombone player. I don't remember his name. I think it was a trombone. It was some brass instrument.

Raymond Hatfield:

And

Shane Balkowitsch:

they asked him, why do you still practice? You know, you're 98 years old. you were a master. Why are you still practicing? He says, because I, I still think I can get better. That's what we should try to do. And I still think that I can get better. I never want to make. My masterpiece. I want to continue to search for my masterpiece and it's taking little baby steps from here on out. But, I think that's a good rule. And, and I like my work less, the more I make of it. And for me, that's reassuring. And anytime I've told that, I tell that to students every once in a while, and they just, their jaws drop and they're like, what in the hell is this guy talking about? But

Raymond Hatfield:

I get the sentiment and I, appreciate it so much, cause it, it tells me that you're taking your, craft. Extremely seriously. And, that it means a lot to you. I don't want to get to the

Shane Balkowitsch:

pinnacle. We don't want to go to the pinnacle. Why? I can only hope

Raymond Hatfield:

that one day I reach that same spot of, not loving the images that come out of my camera and hoping that each one just gets better and better. but. Shane, I don't know how to end it any better than that. Honestly, I know that we are, we're coming to the end of our time here, so I got to let you go, but before I do, why don't you let listeners know where we can learn a little bit more about you and your work as well? Cause it is truly, awe inspiring work. Yeah, I

Shane Balkowitsch:

think so. If you go, just go to Google and type in Balkowicz, B A L K O W I T S C H, wet plate, you're going to get a myriad of. Articles and stuff about my work. You can go to Amazon. there's a documentary, a one hour documentary about, the work that I do. Uh, Northern Plains Native Americans, a modern web plate perspective. It's a book series. I'm on a 20 year journey to capture a thousand Native Americans. I've published two books so far, book three, I'm 41 images away. I'm going to be at 750 images after 10 years. I'm 41 images away from starting on volume three, and then I'll do volume four eventually. and, if you go onto Facebook, you can find Balkowicz, same spelling. You can find me on Instagram under Balkowicz and, and just follow my work. If, if someone's interested in wet plate photography. I founded a group of friends of Frederick Scott Archer on Facebook. You can join us there and learn a little bit more about this archaic photographic process that humanity abandoned 170 years ago. And, you know, there's still some of us, these old holdouts that are still trying to, prove that this is still legitimate with all this technology, right, with all this technology, prove that this is still legitimate art form. And that's what I try to do every single Friday that I'm in here.

Raymond Hatfield:

I think anybody who challenges that to say that it's not a legitimate art form, has probably just never done it and they are the Luddites. So, uh, again, Shane, thank you so much for coming on. I really do appreciate this talk and I look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Shane Balkowitsch:

It's been an honor, Raymond. Thank you so much.

Today's action item being the one thing that if you implement it today, will move the needle forward in your photography journey is this define, quote unquote art for yourself in just one sentence. Like we talked about, AI images isn't inherently bad. It just needs to be differentiated between it and an authentic photograph. But we photograph things ourselves with our cameras for a purpose to create something, to communicate something, and that is the art form. So take time to sit down. And reflect on what is art to you. What does art mean to you in your photography? This doesn't have to be world changing. It can just be something that means something to you, that gives you a purpose and a direction to move forward when you go to future shoots. When you think about the things that you want to capture, the way that you capture, the way that you, put out and share your images, so that you can be more intentional every time you press the shutter button. So there you go. That is it for today. Until next week, remember, the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you'll be tomorrow. Talk soon.