The world of image creation is changing fast, and AI is a big part of that, the line between a real photograph and a fabricated one keeps getting harder to spot. I want to be clear about where I stand on this.
No image I produce is created by AI. Every photograph starts as a real photograph, of real people, in real locations, taken on the day.
I do use AI tools within Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, but only to speed up work I’d be doing anyway. That might mean removing a stray object that’s pulling focus from the background, or clearing a temporary blemish from someone’s skin. I don’t alter body shape, and I won’t start.
On occasion, a client asks for a composite image, built from more than one photograph. Cloudfm commissioned one of these, a cricket player shot against a background assembled separately. AI played a small part there too, cutting down the time it took to remove a background, but the composite itself still came down to a retoucher’s eye and skill to put the parts together properly. AI didn’t do the creative work, it just sped up one step of it.
Anything beyond my standard retouching process is agreed with the client first, with clear direction on what the finished image needs to look like before I touch it.
Ignoring AI altogether wouldn’t serve my clients well, it would just mean slower turnaround for no good reason. So I use it where it genuinely helps, in the processing stage, while the photography itself stays entirely down to the person behind the camera.