There’s a certain type of photographer that’s probably about to take a massive tumble, and I can’t wait for it to happen. For years, various photographers have only photographed pretty women just for the views on social media, Reddit, etc. They did it just to become some sort of influencer and not really a photographer. After all, they never talk about the shoots they do for magazines or other publications that involve actually invoicing. But the truth is that these days, you can’t really tell if many of them are really doing the shoots themselves, or if they’re making AI-generated images of women.
I realized this recently when I went onto Behance. The only places that one would consider to be social media that I actively still go on are Behance, Reddit, VSCO, and Flickr. I consider these to be more like communities, but if you look around at some of the top work, you’ll often find images of very pretty women not doing much at all. It’s the male gaze that women have talked about for years.
But as I scroll though, I realize what I’ve known for a while: the images are often lazy and lack any sort of real creativity. In a world where everyone is good-looking, we all need and want more.
These types of photographers are bound to have their work replaced by AI soon. They’re not doing anything unique or finding ways to push the boundaries of photography because their aim is simply to create photographs that require minimal work from them yet gain them so much respect online. And because so many photographers only have a diet of online imagery, they don’t change much at all. There’s a joke about using Kodak Portra, a warm filter, and a pretty girl that gets you all the upvotes on Reddit.
In a time like today, photographers really do have to work on making unique work that others can’t do. We can’t all be the same. And if anything, it means that so many of them will simply disappear because their online diet will be poisoned. I liken it to both the Irish Potato Famine and exactly what has happened to bananas over the years due to fungal growths.
If you’re one of those photographers reading this article: please start to change. It’s time to start creating and not just capturing.
Worst of all, you’ve given up the copyright to your work by posting it all on social media.
I hope the Sony Educator, Hasan Amin, who stole my image years ago realizes this.