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

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Shane Balkowitsch (00:02):
All the images that I make are made out
of pure silver.
And what's beautiful about puresilver is that silver doesn't
degrade.
So these are the most archivalphotographs man has ever
created.
So when someone comes into mystudio on a Friday and I take
their portrait, I can honestlytell them that this photograph
outlasts any other photographever taken of you in your life.
It's the most beautifulphotographic process man has
ever invented, and it wasn't agood enough reason to abandon

(00:24):
this.
There's less than a thousand ofus in the world that can pull
off a wet plate today.
Hey, photo friends Raymond here,and welcome to the Beginner
Photography Podcast, where everyTuesday I drop a brand new
episode to help you capturebetter photos through learning
from some of the world's mostcreative photographers.
And here on Thursdays, I share arewind episode, a past

(00:44):
conversation handpicked justbecause it is as valuable today
as it was when it first aired.
So whether you're brand new oryou're revisiting with fresh and
more experienced ears, thisepisode is packed with timeless
photo wisdom to help you growbehind the lens.
In today's rewind episode, weare chatting with wet plate

(01:05):
photographer Shane Boic aboutthe implications and challenges
of AI generated imagery in theworld of photography.
But first, the BeginnerPhotography Podcast is brought
to you by Clouds Spot.
Clouds Spot has everything youneed to build a thriving
photography business, impressyour clients, deliver a
professional experience, andstreamline your workflow all in

(01:27):
one platform.
So grab your free foreveraccount today
over@deliverphotos.com.
So today's guest, Shane Koic, isa web plate photographer,
meaning, he shoots using analmost 200 year old photographic
process that captures images onglass.
Now, I'm sure that, you know,when you think of old timey

(01:47):
photography, you can kind ofpicture it in your head.
But when you see one of theseplates, when you hold one,
there's this magical feeling,knowing that that light had
reflected off of the person orthe scene and it hit that exact
plate that you are holding orlooking at and, recorded it,

(02:08):
ready to be archived forhundreds of years.
And we contrast that with theprevalence of AI images that we
see today.
Things that never happened withpeople or places that never
existed.
So today we talk a lot aboutwhat photography truly is, and
we talk about the ethicalconsiderations as well.

(02:30):
And we talk about the clear needfor a way to differentiate
between real human createdphotographs and AI generated
images as well.
Now there is no putting thegenie back in the bottle at this
point, so my hope is that thisinterview is gonna help you to
think about your decisions as aphotographer, and ways that you

(02:51):
can introduce more authenticityinto your images, so that you
can contribute.
Humanity, whether it is theentire world or it's just
yourself and your family.
Also, real quick, pat on theback to you, because you know
that there is an ability tocreate AI images and despite
that, you're still drawn tophotography, right?

(03:14):
For one reason or another.
Maybe it's, the people, maybeit's the mental clarity that you
get when shooting.
Maybe it's the act of justcreating with a tool in your
hand, you know, whatever it is.
But in the same way that peopledidn'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 andget on into today's rewind

(03:36):
interview with Shane Baic.

Raymond Hatfield (03:39):
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 newlisteners since last time you
were on.
So before we get into today'sepisode, can you just kind of
remind me and listeners kind ofhow you got your journey into a
unconventional form ofphotography?

Yeah, one of the oldest analog photography
processes known to man.
It's a wet plate collodionphotography was invented in 1851
by Frederick Scott Archer backin 2012.
I never even owned a camera.
I saw a wet plate online and, Ijust, Asked the photographer
what was that he said it's a wetplate.
I don't know what about itattracted me to this I'd never

(04:21):
had owned a camera never had anyinterest in photography
whatsoever And I said that Iwould like to do that and he had
been a photographer.
His name's paul deloreanz He's agreat guy and and he said well,
are you a photographer shanasaid no, I don't own a camera
And he said, Well, there's noway a non photographer will ever
teach himself wet plating.
And within 45 days of thatconversation, I had made my

(04:41):
first exposure.
And here I am about 11 yearsinto this journey of, chasing
this analog photography.

I know when you tell me that this is analog
photography, I kind of laughbecause like, it is as analog as
it gets, right?
Like you, you almost just, justbreezed over that.
It's the other end of thespectrum.
Right, exactly.
Like, even more so than filmphotography.
So, again, for those listeningwho might not know what wet
plate is, can you just talkabout the intensive steps that

(05:10):
are involved, just To be able tocapture and exposure.

Yeah.
So this, you have to putyourself in, the Victorian era.
You have to think about, AbrahamLincoln had his web taken, if
that gives you an idea.
So you see, um, every once in awhile, you'll watch a Western
where the guy will have amagnesium shooter, where it goes
pop like that.
And he's taking a picture ofsomeone that it was new
technology.
That's about 1905.
Okay.
This process was 55 years beforethat.

(05:34):
So you, you have to, I'm makingsilver on glass.
images.
So all the images that I makeare made out of pure silver.
And what's beautiful about puresilver is that silver doesn't
degrade.
So these are the most archivalphotographs man has ever
created.
So when someone comes into mystudio on a Friday and I take
their portrait, I can honestlytell them that this photograph
outlasts any other photographever taken of you in your life.

(05:56):
And we abandoned this in 1885for why humans abandoned a lot
of things, um, for somethingmore convenient, dry plating
came around and, thephotographer didn't have The
poor, messy chemicals onto aplate to get the bromide salts
to pull silver out of a silvernitrate bath and make a
photosensitive plate.
So I'm essentially making forsome of your listener making
sheet film on stained glass.

(06:17):
And, we just abandoned this in1885.
And in my opinion, I'm.
And I'm, like I said, down thisrabbit hole, 11 years, it was,
it's the most beautifulphotographic process man has
ever invented, and it wasn't agood enough reason to abandon
this.
And there's, there's less than athousand of us in the world that
can, pull off a wet plate today.
So, I've got, works at 68different museums around the
world, including theSmithsonian, the library of

(06:38):
Congress, the herd museum, theRoyal photographic society over
there with you, that's theoldest photographic society in
the world, they have two of myplates, so it's been a wild
journey.
And, I'm just honored to be ableto, uh, Um, and I'm very
grateful for that.
When I first started, I neverhad.
And I thought that anyone wouldbe interested in what I had to
say or any of my work.
I was just taking photographswith my family.
And then it just kind ofsnowballed into what it is

(07:00):
today.
And I'm very grateful.

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

I think it's the, it's the whole, hook of
history that I, I'm reallyfascinated with.
I, I like making these, theseare objects, understand when we
use our digital cameras and Iuse, I don't own any other
camera, by the way, the onlyother camera I have is my
iPhone.
So, but when I, you know, openthe shutter on, we, we should
explain to your listeners aswell.
So the shutter on your iPhone'sopen for about one 60th of a
second on average, these are 10second exposure.

(07:39):
So it's 600 times longer to makea wet plate than it is with a
modern day phone.
Um, so, my Native Americanthing, Northern Plains Native
Americans and modern wet plateperspective is just, I consider
it my life's work, but, I'm inlove with the fact that I'm,
capturing light at anyparticular time.
And that light is put in puresilver on something that is
going to be here long after I'mgone.

And

there's something magical about that.
We just, there's something aboutthe fact that.
These images, I'm makingsomething that's very permanent.
And, if I label the plateproperly on the back and put the
date and the plate number andwho the subject is and where the
photo goes taken and the F stopsor whatever I want to put on the
back, that record is going to behere long after I'm gone.

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

got, historical examples, just a
couple of feet from me here onthe 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 yourmother's, shoe box of
photographs, which I know yourmother probably has a shoe box
for, you can, she gave them allto me.
I have them all.
And there you can look.
Terrible condition and they'rein terrible condition, right?
And they're only 40 years old.
So, you know, these are, it's amagnificent process.

(08:54):
And, and silver, you know, it's,I tell the students that I have
college students and I haveabout eight different classes
come out every year.
Hundreds of students come out tomy studio.
They'll see this processfirsthand.
And then I, I tell the students,if you put a silver spoon on the
ground and you come back 500years from now, what's on the
ground and the answer must be asilver spoon.
And that, that's, that speaks tothe permanence of these images.
it's the polar opposite ofdigital, you know, our topic

(09:17):
today is artificialintelligence, AI and, and stuff
like that.
So I'm, I'm as old school.
My process is as old school asit gets.

So.
Then why are we talking about aI today?

I made my living in technology.
So I noticed that this newtechnology, 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 intothis and I've read many books
and I've listened to manypodcasts of the world's experts
about this, this technology andstuff and, and AI, a lot of
people think AI is this is a newthing, right?
I mean, they were discussing inthe 1950s.

(09:50):
So this isn't a new thing.
It's just Now in the 2020s, wewere able to actually have the
technology to do some of thethings that they knew that we
were going to be able to do backin the 1950s.
And so I was on Instagram and Istarted seeing these images and
thought they were fantastic.
I was seeing these images pop upand pop up and these people were
making these different images.
And then I noticed that theystarted calling these
photographs.

(10:11):
Here's a photograph.
Here's an AI photograph.
And I'm at that point.
My gut told me, hold on aminute.
this is not right.
We need to draw some kind ofline here in the sand that says
that these aren't photographs.
And so I, you know, I've writtenthree articles for Petapixel.
The first one was about how,these are not photographs that
in order to be a photograph, youhave to Use light and you have

(10:33):
to use a photosensitive materialor a sensor, you know, if we
want to talk about your modernday, listeners and stuff.
And, none of that is happeningwith AI photography.
So then I dove in deeper and howis it doing this?
And I learned about thediffusion and how it takes
images and then it diffuses themand adds a bunch of static.
And then comes out of the staticand then it judges that result
and then makes decisions.

(10:53):
And then gives you back what itthinks you want to see.
And, so I, started saying, Thepeople that are making these
images need to have their ownterminology.
Like photography is photographyand it shouldn't have to
encompass things, othertechnologies that it's not,
right?
I mean, it's, it's not, gas caris not a horse and we need to

(11:13):
come up with our own term.
They need to come up with theirown terminology.
And, you know, I had thrown outin that article, what I come up
with is prompted artificialgraphic design was, an acronym
that I had come up with.
And other people have come upwith promptology and
promptography.
And there's, I mean, there's amillion different things, but I
do see that they're now, since Imade that argument that we need

(11:34):
to have terminology thatsurrounds us.
So we understand what we'retalking about and that everyone
who's viewing these thingsunderstands what it is we're
viewing.
I think that's very important.
Okay.
Because these aren't photographsand this, this process you
understand a year ago.
Raymond, you would look at anportrait, let's just say, cause
I'm a portrait person.
So let's talk about portraits.
You'd look at an AI portrait andyou would just kind of laugh.
There was like three ears and,12 fingers and, things like

(11:56):
that.
And things were wonky.
Everything was wonky a year ago.
And then six months ago, it'snot so wonky.
And now just recently, it'sreally not wonky.
Yeah.
And, I'm predicting by the endof the year that.
You know, even the trained eye,a trained expert, I, a trained
photographer, or historian willnot be able to tell the
difference between somethingthat was artificially created

(12:18):
and something that, it was real.
And as, and a historian is aperson that's trying to document
Native Americans or the personthat's trying just to document
the people in my life aroundhere.
I mean, that's what my work is,right?
it's a reflection of the times.
Around my studio of, the peoplehere.
And, it really, I push back onthis, that let's stop calling
this photography, come up withyour own terms, call it,
whatever you want, just let'sstop talking, calling it

(12:41):
photography.
And, and a lot of people havereally, gotten behind that, that
this is the, everyone is, youknow, not everyone, but a lot of
people are acknowledging now,but if you go to Instagram today
and type in AI photography, Youknow, last week there was 178,
000 people that disagreed withthat concept.
So there's 178, 000

AI

photographs

and

they're not photographs at all.

And

asked an AI artist, I said, why are you
using the word photograph?
They said, well, it's just amarketing thing.
That's what people relate to isthat you got to call it what you
think.
It is or what it's like.
And I'm like, I said, that's nota good reason.
It's you're, you're calling anapple and orange.
And, that doesn't work.
And we need to respect the fieldof photography.
And, that was my big first push.

(13:25):
My big, article was on, uh,Photographs are not photographs.
They're they're images.
They're graphic designs orwhatever 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'reasking for, I'm, I'm trying not
to be in a bubble, right?
I'm trying to like put my ideasout there and get feedback from

(13:46):
people.
And this one gentleman told methat it's a photograph because
computers use fiber optics.
And the fiber optics Use light.
Use light,

light.
Oh my gosh.
So

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

That's about as

stretched out as you get, but that's, I mean,
that's, some of the stuff thatI've been, I've been dealing
with and I, and I should tellyour listeners, I'm not against
AI at all.
I have friends that are even webplate artists that actually,
Make a I images and I love them.
I think they're fantastic.
the other thing that we have toworry about, Raymond is, well,
what are we going to do withthese images?
what's the purpose of themreally, you know, it was an

(14:30):
argument.
I had a TEDx talk about sixyears ago and, and I asked why
are we taking all these digitalphotographs?
it just seems like a bunch ofinformation that nobody, we're
only looking at it on our littlescreens.
Nobody's doing prints anymore.
Right.
I mean, we're not doingexhibitions of our iPhone
photographs.
I mean, but we're, we take moredigital photographs today than
the first 150 years ofphotography.
I don't know if I mentioned thatin the first podcast that we

(14:51):
did.
So why are we, what are we doingwith these?
Okay.
We're seeing them on Instagram.
We're seeing them on Facebook.
We're sharing them.
We're kicking them back andforth and, oh, that's beautiful
and stuff.
But, is someone gonna, you'regoing to have an exhibition and,
and there, there will be someexhibitions.
I have no doubt that there willbe exhibitions and this will be
curated work and so forth.
But I mean, are people gonna,let's go back to portraiture.
Okay.

(15:11):
There was a photograph that afriend of mine did of a young
girl, an AI photograph.
She does not exist.
She never existed and she willnever exist.
And so I have to ask myself,will someone in the future?
And that was my second articleon this topic.
Was talking about how this isgoing to affect our history.

(15:32):
Will someone in the futureactually think if they get ahold
of that, because once you put iton the web, we know what happens
with it, right?
It's got a life of its own.
Someone could stumble upon thispicture of this redheaded young
girl and think that she wasactually somebody, somebody who
felt pain and had love and died.
and all the things that ushumans do all the.
the human aspects of why I thinkI love photography, like that.

(15:55):
It's the human element of why,why am I with portraiture?
And I'm not taking pictures ofpine trees, right?
I mean, there's something aboutlooking at a photograph of
someone from 170 years ago.
There's something there.
there's a relationship betweenthe present and the past.
and I can understand, I can tryto understand who that person
was.
you don't have that with this.
So this, girl could end up Maybeher photograph's curated at a

(16:17):
museum, and they thought thatshe 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 intelligenceit's due and, say that it owns
the rights.
And I don't know if yourlisteners know, but if you read
through the terms of these, midjourney and so forth like that,

(16:39):
these different applications,you do not have the rights to
any of the output.
Okay.
So the, the prompter does nothave the rights to any of the
output.
So that's, the first time that'shappened, right?
Like when, as an artist.
Let me ask you, when is the lasttime you knew of an artist that
made something that didn't havethe rights to?
When has that ever occurredbefore?

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

never.
So the, the terms of these, allthese applications, so you're
making, say you want to do anexhibition, you want to do some,
or is someone going to buy thata print?
Of that fake AI girl and hang iton their wall, right?
Yeah.
That's the

question.
Yeah.

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

So let me ask you a question then, because I
think one of the problems thatwe're having, with describing
these AI images, is one, becausethey, they look photorealistic.
and we just don't have the, the,the.
Language yet to describe, youknow what it properly is.
but also, when it comes to theseimages, I want to know, because
the other, conversation that'sbeing had around a lot of this

(17:57):
is, is any of this art, right?
Because if it is, is AI creatingart?
because apparently it is, if itowns the rights to it, you know,
all, all these weird legalquestions.
So from your standpoint, Okay.
I know that we can get, youknow, technical definitions out
of a dictionary, but how do youdefine art?

Yeah, and I wrote a third article for
Petticoat.
So that that was sort of thefirst article was about these
aren't photographs.
The second was about how it'sgoing to affect their history.
And the third one, can weconsider this art?
I don't want to be in thesituation where I'm the guy
that's The gatekeeper to what'sart, right?
I mean, we've, you know, in thatarticle, I gave some very good
examples of, the banana tape tothe duct tape to the wall that's

(18:38):
sold for 120, 000, right?
in the early 1900s an artistcame into a gallery and
submitted a urinal and said thatthis is art.
They just wanted to put it on apedestal and said that this
urinal is art.
And, there was a lot of debatethere.
So there's, there's all theseexamples in the past, where,
people were questioning whetheror not these things are art.
And, I don't know whether or notthey're art.

(18:59):
and we, we gave in the article,I had a co writer.
we gave the pros and cons toboth things.
But we just couldn't be in thesituation where we're saying
that this is an art.
I like, I just, I can't findmyself telling someone else.
What art is and what art is notso sure.
But with the ai question is iswho's the owner and who's
creating this?

No, no, no.
No, I now we're going too far.
I want to know what is yourdefinition of art?
That's what I want to know likewhen you see something and
because I think that we can allagree that when you see art You
know that it's art, butsometimes it's hard to put into
words, right?
So when you see something thatyou think, this is art, how
would you define that?

Well, I think it's anytime an artist decides
to put labor into something andto actually bring something and,
and to say, this is what Icreated.
And then we can take whatever wewant.
Away from that, it's the intent,right?
Was it, was there an intentthere?
If a banana just got taped to awall 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.

(20:00):
There's a difference betweenthat, right?
Like you wouldn't call that art,but then you have the intent of
the artist saying, yeah, this ismy art.
And he stood by that and thepiece sold.
It's about intent, and Iunderstand that it's the intent.
Of these prompting these peoplethat are prompting the AI to
give them things.
who's actually creating it.
We got to let your listenersknow that these images, are

(20:22):
being constructed from billionsof other images from other
artists.
And this is without permission.
I went to a website and I foundout over 30 of my Native
American works were in the, inthe training of AI.
And there was no permission.
There was no, um, Oh, we'regoing to give you some kind of
compensation.
There was no, none of that.
It just was, they trained, theiralgorithms on my work and, and

(20:43):
billions of other, photographerswork.
And, that's where it's, it'scoming up with that.
I had this interesting, itoccurred to me, Like, how much
control do we have over this ai?
So I put out this AI challengeabout a month ago where I had an
idea of a, of, I did a piece, ofa, a woman with a moon head.
Okay?
So we, my prop master made thismoon, and it's called the

(21:04):
waning.
And, you can find it on, on,maybe on Facebook.
So I asked everyone if this wasyour idea.
This was what, as the artist.
I asked all the artists if thiswas your what you had in your
mind.
This is because when I createsomething, like when I would
make that, I knew what I wantedto get to.
Like I chased these things.
I have before I pour thechemicals on the plate, I know
what I'm going after, right?

(21:25):
Like I have this idea andsometimes it turns out,
sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes I get something Idon't, I wasn't expecting.
Sometimes I get exactly what Iwas expecting, but I know what I
want.
So I, I asked artists, AIartists to take up the challenge
of if this is what is in yourmind that you wanted to create.
Create it with AI.
And what we found out is thatthere's not enough control of
the AI at this point to getanywhere near what it is that we

(21:50):
were trying to get to.
So the AI just, you prompt itand it gives you something back
and it may give you 10 differentresults back and then you say,
oh, I like that one the best.
You click on that and then youcan prompt it further and you
can continue to tweak it andtweak it and tweak it.
But it's all this, this wholething is about, How the AI gives
you what it thinks you want tosee.
And then us as humans, we say,Oh, that's what I wanted to see.

(22:13):
But that's, that's not what youwanted to see at all.
And you really, you gotta takewhat it gives you and you don't
really, you can't specificallysay, I want this.
And even if you feed inphotographs that you're taking
yourself and try to get to,something reasonable that you
had in your mind, a that youhad.
It's just the AI, it doesn'tknow how to get there.

(22:33):
There's no method by which youcan prompt it to get exactly
what, what you're trying tofind, but it will give you
something that it thinks youwant to see.
And then we just accept it as,Oh, that's what I wanted.

I know, uh, I've been at weddings before
where, I unintentionally took aphoto.
Maybe I was moving the camera orsomething and that photo turned
out to be one of my favoritesand the couple's favorite, which
sometimes makes me ask thequestion as well because it's
the intention.
And I see where you're comingfrom.
And in large, I also agree withyou because, I've said many

(23:07):
times that the differencebetween, a snapshot and a
photograph is intention.
Um, in how you frame the imagein waiting for the right moment
to happen in how you control thelight coming in, you know, any
of these aspects.

Yes.

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

accident,

a happy accident, you know, I love it.
And I struggle with, answeringmyself.
Sometimes is this Art.
And then I think at the end ofthe day, I've never really had
to worry about this because Iguess I've never just been
challenged on what is art moreso than what we have in recent
months, right?
because of AI.
but going back to what you weresaying about, you know, like how

(23:44):
you had this idea in your head.
You then started putting stepsinto place, right?
You, you contacted a propmaster.
This is what I need.
You contacted a model.
This is when I need you, you gotthe, you know, you got
everything ready to take thatphoto and you got it.
When it comes to AI and allthose people putting in prompts
to try to get something similarto what you had created and they

(24:06):
weren't able to.
Do you think that that is just aproblem that we have today, and
that in future iterations we'llhave more control over it, or do
you think that fundamentallyit'd be like telling my child to
draw something that I see in myhead, and of course it's never
going to come out exactly how Isee it?
That's a big question rightthere.

It's a big question.
it's using billions of images,so it's being influenced by
these images.
It can only give us somethingback from what it's been trained
on, like what it knows, right?
It knows the images that werethat were put.
So it has a limited number ofinputs that it that it's working
with.
But what we do know that this isgoing to be getting better.
Raymond, this is going tocontinue to get better.
The technology is going to getbetter.

(24:48):
The interfaces, the By which youinteract with this artificial
intelligence, that's going toget better.
So, there's other tools.
So they're, they're laying toolson top of this, this general
prompting.
So there's this melding ofadditional tools to give, people
more and more, control over it.
I just don't want to be the guythat's.
Set tells someone what is artand what is not.

(25:09):
It just doesn't.
No, of course.
Yeah.
It just seems like not a placethat 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 genreof art.
And that they have their own,they describe it properly.
Everyone is saying, well, thisis what it is.
It's AI.
but to get people.
To do that, they're just notbeing honest.

(25:30):
there was a group about aphotographer and I won't even
say that about a historicalphotographer that died in 2004,
but he had, this group has 145,000 followers.
Okay.
So this was a, a streetphotographer that was very well
known and someone presented aportrait of this said 18 years.
And I looked at it and I thoughtright away, this is not a

(25:52):
portrait of this photographer,like this is ai.
So I did a, a quick, I went outto 10 I, which, you know,
there's these reverse imagelookups 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 manyphotographs of David Bowie that
are gonna come on the sceneYeah.
That people have not seen.
Right.
Like we know there's not a lotof that.
And this guy's even more obscurethan David Bowie.

(26:13):
So the fact that there's this,this photograph of him and sure
enough, that image has neverappeared in like 8 billion
websites.
So the image was created by AIand, 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 tooserious here, but is it ethical

(26:36):
to bring a portrait of a maninto the public eye?
2023 when he died 14 years ago,right?
From a historical aspect is hisfamily would they be happy about
this?
Would he be happy about this?
Are you going to is that imagesomehow?
You know the the key words hisname gets associated with that
and someone maybe in the futurethinks That that's actually it
was a portrait of him on aspecific day when yeah, he had

(26:59):
no part of that

I understand exactly what you're saying.
And I know that, you know, likeyou said, this is more of an
obscure, figure, right?
Especially than David Bowie, butI think we all, it's hard to get
less obscure than David Bowie,but, when it comes down to the
ethics of, of the photographhere in this situation, somebody
might say, Okay.
Very few people know exactly whothis person is, but I think
therein lies the danger, right?

(27:21):
Because it doesn't have tohappen to that person.
But, the danger could be that,that now we're, creating these
images of people who, are publicfacing.
Of things that, uh, neverhappened.
Exactly.
And if we called it aphotograph, we're immediately
going to believe that it'srooted in reality.

That's the problem.
Okay.
Because I've seen the argument,Raymond, I've seen the argument.
Well, people do a painting ofDavid 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 aphotograph and we humans.
We know what a photograph is allabout.
We know that it's a record ofsome light at a specific

(28:00):
nanosecond of time, right?
it was that person was sittingthere, like was bouncing off
their face.
And we captured that light insome photo sense of material.
was never a deception.
So when you do a painting, I'vegot a painting, a young college
student did a painting of DavidBowie.
I've got one in my, at myoffice.
It's not the same thing.
This was a black and white.

(28:21):
So they made it black and whiteas well, because that's the,
most of his work was black andwhite.
It was presented that this is aphotograph of so and so, and it
wasn't a photograph of so andso, and I think there's a
problem with that.
And I assume, and so you'reright, we think of photographs
as being truth.
And then I'll say that and thensomeone will come back.
I've heard all the arguments.
I've heard the arguments likeWilliam Mortensen, my favorite

(28:44):
photographer of all time.
It's the 1920s was puttingwitches flying in the sky,
right?
Like there was no witch flyingin the sky that he captured, but
he took a photograph of thehouses, the skyline.
And then he took a photograph ofa muse sitting on a broomstick
and, you know, in his studio andhe combined them together and
made a collage and made this.
Beautiful, fantastic, nude witchflying across the sky.

(29:04):
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 andthose are real houses.
Like I saw an example yesterday.
I mean, we should talk a littlebit about this generative fill
on the Photoshop.
But you've maybe played withthis yet.

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

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

One of the most iconic skyscrapers ever.

You have this, you know what I mean, you
have Central Park, and you haveall this stuff going on, and you
know that building, you knowthat building, you know that
building, and then all of asudden on the sides, there's
these buildings that have neverexisted and will never exist.
And I don't know what thatmeans.
I don't know what that means forhistory.
I don't know what that means forphotography.
And, And I think there's anotherthing happened here that I
haven't talked about yet, but Ithink there's, some playing with

(30:15):
different technologies andpeople are calling things AI
when it's.
It's not really probably aneural network actually doing
some of the stuff there.
using technologies andeveryone's now, everyone's
wanting to say that this is,this is AI.

And,

and the fact is, unless you went there and
saw their, their servers you gotproof that there's a neural
network that was doing thissleight of hand stuff, we don't
even know that this.
Some of the stuff islegitimately artificial
intelligence, right, rightthere.
I know that that's happening.
I know that people are, tryingto scam off other technologies
and say, you know, this isartificial intelligence and

(30:48):
there's no neural network or,you know, there's no deep, deep
mind involved at all.
because those are specificthings you have to have.
There has in order for it to beartificial intelligence, there
has to be a certain kind ofcomputer, set up and I know that
that's happening, that peopleare saying, Oh, look, you know,
this is backed by AI andthey're, they're using all.
So it's this new shiny thingthat everyone, you know, this

(31:09):
little, if I get a period, Iperiod somewhere in my search,
people are going to startlooking at it.
Right.
there's that problem as well,but, yeah.
I'm not sure the generative Philthing is, is, and I got in an
argument with a guy this justthis week.
And you know, it's like, get itin camera.
And then, if you want tomanipulate with Photoshop, we
know that it's not the samething.

(31:29):
You actually started with a realphotograph.
There was actually realphotograph and then you
manipulate, okay, I get that.
I get that.
but this is not that at all.
You're not starting with anykind of reality.

I see what you're saying.
And it's funny cause, for a longtime in, weddings when I would
do, I would create a,essentially it's a collage.
it's a series of photos that Iwould take during the first
kiss.
Um, say, I don't know, 50.
80 photos, right?
Telephoto lens, just smallportion.
Take me weeks down.
Yeah.
It's, it's a lot of, yeah,that's a month's worth of

(32:05):
exposure time on what playedthere.
And then I take all thosephotos, but I bring them into
Photoshop and then create photostitch.
And there's always an option to,I forget exactly what it's
called, but like, uh, contentaware, fill in the edges,
because as you can imagine, asit changes the perspective,
there's some, it's not perfectlysquare.

(32:25):
wrestled with myself on that ofwhether, it's okay or not.
But anyway, I feel like that iskind of the same technology
because that's been around for along time.
Like, what is the differencebetween this content aware fill
and this generative fill?
And that I'm not sure.
So maybe that goes back to thatwhole, is it really AI or is it
just, you know, things aroundthere.
But, regardless, let's, stickback to this, this whole

(32:46):
conversation about photographyAnd 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 aproblem.
How does the problem get fixed?

Well, one of the things that I proposed in
the article, was that there hasto be some kind of identifier.
Like, it may be baked into thedata file, okay?
But that all quickly fallsapart.
So, if it's an AI generatedimage, there's some kind of
identifier in the file that youdon't see.
It doesn't have to be awatermark, something like that,
but it has to be something thatlike Google can identify.

(33:17):
This is artificial intelligence.
I can't put this on the frontpage of the New York times.
You know what I mean?
Like this is, we know that thisis AI, but you know, the way
technology works is, I mean, wecan just grab screen grabs.
And as soon as you grab ascreen, right.
No metadata, nothing comes withit.
Yeah.
It becomes sterile.
That's a problem.
You know, the, the one thing Iwanted is I wanted people to

(33:38):
have, you know, to be honestabout what, what it is that
we're seeing it.
I got, I have no aversion to AIimages when someone says, AI
course, or, you know what Imean?
Like I have no aversionwhatsoever.
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 nohonesty that I really have a

(34:00):
problem.
And I don't know how we're goingto 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 alawsuit in the United Kingdom
trying to demand, this AIcompany from this, software.
So in, in four seconds, so youcan just grab any photograph
from it, Getty Images, and putit in the AI and say, well, I

(34:21):
just want this, I want thisgone.
the new, um, generative fieldthing for Photoshop is gonna fix
that Same thing too.
Right?
So now all of a sudden the, sothe traditional way of
identifying and protecting one'sintellectual property.
It's like stripped away and,there's people that have deep
pockets like Getty that thinksthat this isn't right.

(34:43):
It feels kind of like, what wasit back when, when they first
started stealing music?
What was the name of that?
That's sir.
Napster.
Napster.
Remember when Napster came onand everyone was up in arms.
And then the.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The industry came out and therewas things put in place, but
then we end up with somethinglike Napster anyway, with the
other services that are outthere anyway.
But, at least they were donewith contracts and at least some

(35:03):
of the artists are beingcompensated somewhat.
There's arguments that they'renot being compensated quite
enough.
And I agree with that, but, atleast, it feels kind of like the
Napster era, right?
Like it feels like, okay, thisis the wild west.
now we can just, we're juststealing people's photographs
and we're you putting them in adatabase that we're using that
database to, to generate otherimages.

(35:23):
and then we're giving thoserights away to the AI or to the,
application, or we're giving itto the person that just prompted
four words.
Jackson Pollock's a perfectexample, 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?

(35:44):
And then, you know, his piecesgo on to sell for millions of
dollars.
Yeah.
And he created an entire newgenre of, painting.
So it kind of, it, it's not likewe, 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 itjust doesn't feel like this is
that.
And that's all I can say.
It just.
This doesn't feel like this isthat, not at this level, not at

(36:07):
this, this cowboy kind of wildwest kind of show where
everything's okay and we canjust deceive anyone.

I think that the fundamental problem there is
that when it comes to JacksonPollock, obviously defining art
is personal, right?
However you define art is goingto be the viewer else to find,
right?
Yeah.
But.
When we see a painting, we knowthat that's a painting.
When we see a photograph, weknow that that's a photograph.
until this point, say, you know.

(36:37):
so, when there were othertechnologies that came along,
just from painting tophotography, there was a lot of
backlash.
There was a lot of, or notbacklash, criticism, right?
Like, this is an art, this is,you know, simply a mechanical
process, right?
It's not there's no artisticvision that goes into creating
this, which today we fully,accept that photography is an

(36:58):
art form.
But I think the issue here goesback to the problem that we
started with, is that we don'thave a definition for what this
is, we don't have a name forwhat this is, and because we
don't have a name for what itis, it doesn't feel different

for a

lot of people, and that's what's so hard, that
is what is so hard, if it washttps: otter.
ai I don't know.
vision images, whatever it isthat 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'sgoing on.
And we would understand thatfundamentally this is different,
but because it is sophotorealistic or can be so

(37:34):
photorealistic, that's thechallenge that we need to
answer.
And, I don't know how we'regoing to do that.
I hope that we can come up withsomething.
And the only thing that I canthink of is, similar to what
Apple did when they introducedtheir live photos, on the
iPhone, they didn't call itsomething else.
They called it live.
Photos.
So even though it has the wordphoto in there, we see it as
something entirely differentwhen you watch it.

(37:56):
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 missinghere.
Definitions are important.
So important.
So we make an impact?
How do we get this started?

Well, we just start to raise an awareness and
letting people know about, youknow, 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 toprotect this?
Like the bias, calling

it a photograph.

Yeah.
Or calling it or just to protectit in general.
Like if you see anything againstthe eye, you're just, like I
said, you're just a Luddite.
You don't like technology andyou're just an, you're an old
man by definition and you justdon't understand where the
world's going.
has nothing to do with that.
I mean, think about thephotojournalism.
We need to have a base ofreality.
In our news stories and stufflike that, if we start

(38:45):
manipulating everything, wewon't know what ends up and,
it's a problem.
I've just been on the bandwagonof just trying to, you know,
write some articles.
I've been, you know, the AIchallenge that I put out there.
probably once or twice a week.
I'm thinking about AI and I'mseeing new things come up and
new problems that may be arisingfrom this.
And, is it going to be a fad?

(39:06):
I don't, I'm not sure.
Raymond, is this just going tobe, you know, are people are
going to get bored with, justlike typing in a computer and
having something come back?
I just, I don't know what thepurpose of it's for, other than
to see something.
Unless there's some likedopamine thing that you're
getting, like, it's like a slotmachine, right?
It's that sound of the coinsfalling out of the slot machine.
You pull the lever, you hear thecoins hit the bottom of the tray

(39:29):
and you get that dopamine rush.
I, I'm not sure, but, but we'remaking more images than

we've

You know, just information glut.
And this is just now.
We don't even know, what realityis.
And I get the point thatPhotoshop, 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 ruinphotography.
This just does not seem likethat.
This just seems like that onsteroids and, I could be, I'm

(39:58):
perfectly okay being wrong withthis.
I said that before the show, I'mperfectly 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'mcompletely wrong and that I just
I miss this fundamentalwonderful thing that's gonna
reshape art and photography andit's gonna take, creation to

(40:20):
another level.
I don't know how you can takecreation to another level when,
person is creating isn't theowner of of the object.

Sure.
Yeah, that is a big problem.
That is a big problem that,whenever money is involved.
You know, they're always goingto win.
The company is going to win.
Uh, and that the only way thatyou can control, your creative
output is for you to do ityourself.
So fully understand that.
But I think here's how peoplecan become.
More creative and just I'venever created.
Let me be clear.

(40:49):
I've never created an image withanything like mid journey Or
I've never because I've neverhad a need to create any sort of
real photo realistic image butwhen I was in high school, I was
just terrible with words and Ihad 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.

(41:10):
It's almost embarrassing.
Okay.
But instead I decided to make astupid little video with my
friends showing off to myteacher that I, at least I
understood the concepts withinthe book.
My problem was putting it downin words.
And from that moment on, he waslike, You don't ever have to
write a book report again, likejust do video here.
And I've always kind of had thatissue with words.

(41:30):
I can't put them together.
Right.
I can't, which is interestingthat I talk on a podcast all the
time, but I still feel likewords are very difficult for me,
especially organizing them in myhead.
And I will say that from a,Chad, GBT has taken all of the
words that I've given it and theway that it organizes things, Is
exactly how I imagined thembeing organized and it has

(41:52):
helped me immensely in that wayAnd has helped me create
different creative pathways, Isuppose So playing devil's
advocate here.
I'm only assuming and I hopethat this is the case That
there's a certain subset ofpeople who are very good with
words and not so much visualliteracy And they're able to
take these words and then turnit into something visual but

(42:14):
again are they a writer?
Because that's what they aregood at, or is what they created
something entirely different?
Did they create that?
And I go back to the, painterversus a photographer argument
of photography is just amechanical process.
There's no artistic visioninside.
And so.
All you need is a technicalunderstanding of how light works

(42:35):
and you're gold.
And I wonder if that's happeninghere.
Like, if we're having a samemoment in that aspect.
Not that, not that these are thesame images or the same result,
but I'm wondering if, if we'rejust having an issue.
In describing the tools thatwe're using.
and that I think your

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

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

No, no, no, no, no.
I'm just saying that There'sexamples of, you know, where we
should talk about this, thatwe're talking about all the bad
things with this and that it hasall the, it has the promise to
cure cancer out there.
The promise to get humans offthis earth, right?
I mean, these are huge things.
I mean, it's already solved theprotein folding problem that we
thought we could never solve.

(43:23):
So it has wonderful things, butwe 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 alittle bit more caution.
But I think as long as you havepeople that are willing to just
try to deceive people, you know,you're going to see it.

(43:45):
Yeah.
You're going to see it in thenews, their newsroom.
You're going to see it in thephoto journalism stuff.
People are going to make stuffthat aren't, isn't true.
And they're going to start anarrative behind it.
and,

um, you know, how about we come to a close on
a high note here.
Okay.
Because I know that this, feelsto some people as, as if this is
just pure doomsday and, youknow, talking before we hit
record, I know that you don'tfeel that way.
I don't feel that way, eventhough there are concerns, like
you said, we have to step intoit a little bit more, but there

(44:16):
are obviously exciting elementsabout AI.
So, let me ask you the question.
If we come up with a newdefinition of any sort of image
that is created by AI, a newdefinition, it has a name,
something entirely different.
And it's widely accepted.

Are we done?
I still think we have to addressthe stealing of images from
artists.
Previous army images.
You have to understandMidjourney's using Leonardo Da
Vinci stuff.
He's using William Morton'sstuff.
It's using Picasso.
It's using All these people, notjust present day people, all the
great masters chat GPTs usingShakespeare, these things have

(44:53):
all been fed into it.
And I think, that these AIcompanies, if they wouldn't have
been such a rush to go tomarket, they could have done
this properly.
They could ask photographers,you know what I mean?
If you have some photographs youdon't really care about, can you
give them to us?
we'll give you a nickel a pieceor 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.

(45:14):
Please give us your images.
They would have gotten billionsof images.
They wanted the shortcut.
They just wanted to strip theinternet and take and not give
the credit where the credit'sdue because without the input,
you can't have the output.
Sure.
So this, AI.
It's nothing mad.
it doesn't have that creativespark.
It doesn't have without, if youtake all the images away from

(45:35):
it, Midjourney can't doanything.
So it needs those images and thepeople that need to be
acknowledged that, providedthose images, not just myself,
Leonardo da Vinci needs to beacknowledged.
Jackson Pollock, he's in there.
I mean, there's everyone.
Is in there.
And, I think if it goes back tojust honesty and, I don't have
any problem with AI, I thinkthere's going to be some big
changes, for photography.

(45:57):
Here's just think about this.
No more sets, no more props, nomore lighting, no more camera,
no more photographer.
I don't like that.
It seems like we're cutting somethings out, right?
we're losing something.
These are all the things thatyou no longer need.
and you're making imagery, whichit's not a problem.

(46:17):
Just tell me that what, that'swhat it is.
Just tell me that it's, it wasAI generated.
And then I know the method.
It's like taking a charcoalpainting and seeing it's a
photograph, right?
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
It's like taking a charcoalpainting and saying, well, this
is a photograph and you look atit, you go like, that's not, but
the problem we're going to haveis that they're going to get so

(46:39):
darn good.

Yeah.

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

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

Okay,

Many professionals are worried that
AI is going to take their job.
And in fact, I've talked aboutthis on the podcast.
I think next year, the firstproduct will probably come to
market where a bride and a groomcan just upload selfies that
they took on their wedding dayinto some sort of, AI type tool.
And now they have world classimages of their wedding without
a wedding.
I hate

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 photographof you and your bride.
And you can place you and yourbride in any tuxedo, in any
wedding dress, in any locationin the world.
I got married here in Bismarck,North Dakota, but now I can get
married in Bali.

Right.
Yes.
And I didn't have

to get on a plane.

are those photographs going to

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

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

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

based authentic photography.
Yes.
Yes.

That at some point that is, it's this, new
shiny object is just going to betossed aside for what it is and
people are going to want to comeback.
let's just say, I think that's apositive.
I think that that's it.
So we can draw that line thatpeople are going to have more
appreciation for what I do herein my studio, getting that moon
and getting the prop and gettingthe lighting.

(48:39):
And you know, it, took us threemonths.
Yeah.
It took us three months to getthat shot.
And guess how many exposures Imade.
I spent three months on the propand getting everything ready in
the model and everythingtogether to exposures

to exposures.
Yeah, that's

what it took.
I took two exposures.

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

I got it?

I

got it.
You got it.
Yeah, I don't need the glut.
I don't need to take, I don'tneed more, more is not better.
And if we, you know, this is abeginning, 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 bitto the listeners, they.
Less is more.
You don't have to take 4000photographs at a wedding.

Okay.

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'mtelling you, Raymond, you get to
go take Evander Holyfield'sphotograph like I took.
Yeah, bring your camera.
He's coming in at two o'clock.
Guess what?
Your camera's full and you onlyhave room for six exposures.

(49:48):
Yeah.
And you have them for one hour.
It sounds insanity.
But when you work under thoseconstraints, and you think about
less is more.
Someone argued today that justtake you could just take as
many.
It was even on your own.
I think you posted it a week orso ago.
You said sometimes take morephotographs.
So you never know what's, thegem that you may find or you may
shine.
Do you remember doing that?
There was something like, if youtake more, I would like to

(50:10):
argue, let's take less.

And,

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 ofjust filling the camera up and
sifting through, all thesephotographs to find that little
gem.
Because if you just.
You know, turn that shutteropen.
It just captures a hundredphotographs.
you're back to this.
Was it your hand stroke?
Was it your brush stroke thatgot that one photograph?

(50:33):
or was it just chance?
It shouldn't be chance.
It happens every once in awhile.
We talked about it.
There's happy accidents in mystudio all the time, but if
there's the intent, if you goback to the intent, I think
we'll all do better inphotography.

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

Absolutely.

And the difference is?

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

Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Okay.
It's taken me 11 years to makethat many plates.
I've realized that, my standardshave changed and that I do.
that moment where like, Oh, thisis, this is exact.
This is what I wanted.
this is the magic, right?
It's almost like the golferhitting that hole in one, right?
It's like, or that perfectswing.
You hit it every once in awhile.
And you only have to hit itevery once in a while.
The more I take photographs, theless I like my work.

(51:44):
And I think that that's apositive thing because it means
my standards have changed rightand that, when I first was
starting, if I got my thatphoto, 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 itwith, you know, I look back at
fondly, but, it was big leaps.
But now it's these little babysteps that I got to, I'm

(52:06):
fighting and kicking andscratching just to make that
next improvement.
And I think that's what it's allabout in the end.
So, and I don't think this is aprocess and I don't think even
your, you know, digitalphotography, it's a process that
you should ever feel comfortablethat you mastered.
I, I've heard there's sometrombone player that it was 98
years old and he had the world'sbest trombone player.

(52:28):
I don't remember his name.
I think it was a trombone.
It was some brass instrument.

And

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 stillthink I can get better.
That's what we should try to do.
And I still think that I can getbetter.
I never want to make.
My masterpiece.
I want to continue to search formy masterpiece and it's taking
little baby steps from here onout.
But, I think that's a good rule.

(52:53):
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, Itell that to students every once
in a while, and they just, theirjaws drop and they're like, what
in the hell is this guy talkingabout?
But

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

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

that one day I reach that same spot of, not
loving the images that come outof my camera and hoping that
each one just gets better andbetter.
but.
Shane, I don't know how to endit 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 yougo, but before I do, why don't
you let listeners know where wecan learn a little bit more

(53:38):
about you and your work as well?
Cause it is truly, awe inspiringwork.
Yeah, I

think so.
If you go, just go to Google andtype in Balkowicz, B A L K O W I
T S C H, wet plate, you're goingto get a myriad of.
Articles and stuff about mywork.
You can go to Amazon.
there's a documentary, a onehour documentary about, the work
that I do.
Uh, Northern Plains NativeAmericans, a modern web plate
perspective.
It's a book series.
I'm on a 20 year journey tocapture a thousand Native

(54:03):
Americans.
I've published two books so far,book three, I'm 41 images away.
I'm going to be at 750 imagesafter 10 years.
I'm 41 images away from startingon 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 Instagramunder Balkowicz and, and just
follow my work.
If, if someone's interested inwet plate photography.

(54:24):
I founded a group of friends ofFrederick Scott Archer on
Facebook.
You can join us there and learna little bit more about this
archaic photographic processthat humanity abandoned 170
years ago.
And, you know, there's stillsome of us, these old holdouts
that are still trying to, provethat this is still legitimate
with all this technology, right,with all this technology, prove

(54:45):
that this is still legitimateart form.
And that's what I try to doevery single Friday that I'm in
here.

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

It's been an honor, Raymond.
Thank you so much.
Today's action item being theone thing that if you implement
it today, will move the needleforward in your photography
journey is this define, quoteunquote art for yourself in just
one sentence.
Like we talked about, AI imagesisn't inherently bad.

(55:24):
It just needs to bedifferentiated between it and an
authentic photograph.
But we photograph thingsourselves with our cameras for a
purpose to create something, tocommunicate something, and that
is the art form.
So take time to sit down.
And reflect on what is art toyou.

(55:47):
What does art mean to you inyour photography?
This doesn't have to be worldchanging.
It can just be something thatmeans something to you, that
gives you a purpose and adirection to move forward when
you go to future shoots.
When you think about the thingsthat you want to capture, the
way that you capture, the waythat you, put out and share your

(56:08):
images, so that you can be moreintentional every time you press
the shutter button.
So there you go.
That is it for today.
Until next week, remember, themore that you shoot today, the
better of a photographer you'llbe tomorrow.
Talk soon.

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