Sue and I were in Roker in the North East of England recently. Whilst at dinner in the Roker Hotel we sat next to Ian Macdonald, a photographer from that area.
We got talking and Ian looked at a couple of small images on my phone. He made suggestions about the editing of the one you see here. I made those alterations. The image looks all the better for it.
Thanks Ian.
Before you switch off with boredom, I don’t want to talk about the “Terminator’ effect. No, mine is a more mundane topic and one I have not heard discussed thus far in relation to AI.
As I understand AI, insofar as it relates to the production of images, is the production of a specific machine created image and is made possible by “Talking”, and I use the word loosely here, to a machine instructing it as to the type of picture you want produced, what you want included and telling it what you want to see. Sorry if I have been over simplistic here. The machine then constructs the image and delivers it to you.
I understand it uses data, i.e. images, from the vast resources of the web to make its construct. The question comes to mind; Do the AI packages pay for the use of these images to fabricate the final images? I’m guessing not. So the images are simply misappropriated, not in monetary terms, but for the benefit implicit in using those images. Afterall, if they are good enough to use for the AI company’s benefit then they are good enough to pay for. If not why not?
Let’s use this concept and take it to the next step. Say I were to take an AI generated image and re-purpose it – as in their model – for my own benefit and they were to sue me for Copyright infringement. Where would we both stand on this? I can’t see the rights they would stand on to prosecute. Afterall it would be an extension of their own business model i.e. stealing images to make their own, so suing another party for using what are afterall stolen images would seem to me to be shaky grounds for Copyright infringement.
This all begs the question Can AI generated images be called copyright at all?.
Finally, If I were to take one of these AI images and alter it slightly in a Photo editing package, would that overcome any attempt to sue for Copyright infringement?
I use the logic here that I am using a package to alter a picture – Just like the so called originator of that image used a package to alter an already existing image to arrive at their outcome.
How could one of these be right and the other wrong?
One could argue that my human guided, ‘hand made’ alteration has more copyrightable virtue as it would relate to me, a human and an individual in Law, the author of that finished image.
I look forward to seeing the results of the first case.
n.b. I know nothing about the law, as I have manifestly demonstrated above. These are just questions.
In the image world, you can see where AI is leading…
I took this picture of a (then) young man at a travelling fair in Hay Mills, Birmingham (Just off the A45 Coventry Rd) back in the Late 70’s / Early 80’s.
I have a few others from the day but I was recently drawn to this image by the far away look in the young man’s eyes.
If anybody can put me in touch with the subject – just to say hello – I would be grateful.
He would be in his 50’s now I suppose. As I say Time Flies.
We stayed in a hotel in Coventry last weekend. We were at the elegantly re-fitted former home of the Coventry Evening Telegraph, a purpose built structure, now a sensitively styled 1960’s hotel.
All around the hotel there are reminders of its past, not least of which are old front pages placed all around, even in the bathroom in our room. This one, being placed above the toilet was impossible for me to miss.
The piece recounts an accident in Marston Green, once a small village in my childhood – it even had a blacksmiths forge. The main railway line between Birmingham to Coventry and further, was sandwiched alongside the village and a municipal golf course on the other side of the tracks.
As you can read several carriages of an express train were derailed in the station. This occurred, according to the Coventry Evening Telegraph, in 1963. I was 16 by then. Prior to this, in my pre-teens, I would stand on the skeletal metal bridge over the rail line (pictured below) waiting for the steam engines to go through ,blasting steam and smoke upwards and shrouding me in that wonderful smell which has bewitched many a young boy. Sometimes, the driver would see me on the bridge and give a whistle as he went through. Such an exhilarating experience for a young lad.
All pictures copyright of the Coventry Evening Telegraph.
Should you be interested in staying at the Telegraph Coventry, you can find information via this link…
I live on a small estate made up of bungalows. Single story houses only. Consequently there is a preponderance of old people who live hereabouts. The houses suit us you see; no stairs.
It should come as no surprise when people here die as most of us are around the three score year and ten mark.
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A while back we visited an area of Egypt near to Luxor in the Valley of the Kings.
Here are few images from that trip.
(The balloon in the main picture above, taken very early morning above The Valley of the Kings, crashed a year or so later, killing most on board.)
I have taken pictures from an early age and subsequently, I’ve been producing ‘work’ for over 50 years. I have no formal education in Photography. I am entirely self taught.
So it comes as no surprise I only recently heard the term “New Topographics” applied to a style of images.
First coined by William Jenkins in 1975 when he was describing a group of photographers such as Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz and Bernd and Hilla Becher. At the time each of whom adopted a similar banal aesthetic in their formal black and white prints of the urban landscape.
For them and their ilk, car parks, suburban housing, pit-head winding gear, water towers etc were depicted in high quality, stark beauty – as the TATE says on their web site “almost in the way early photographers documented the natural landscape” – hence, I suppose, the term was coined from seeing a new topography directly opposing the picturesque images from the past.
Bernd and Hilla Becher were lecturers at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf. There they influenced a number of students who actively embraced the “New Objectivity” as practised by the Becher’s, forming their own modified style of their tutors called the “Dusseldorf School of Photography”.
The TATE lists Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth as members of this modified Becher style.
Despite my ignorance of the term, the style somehow must have sunk in. Even from my early years with a camera; gas holders, the urban landscape and dereliction attracted me. I was once accused of being a member of the “Dustbin school” of photography. (There was no such school. It was just an insult).
Coincidentally, a few years back we were in Mumbai where, at the time, there was a travelling exhibition of works by the Becher’s. I knew nothing about their work; it mattered not, gas holders and water towers did it for me. Loved it.
To read more about:-
New Topographics
The TATE. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/n/new-topographics
Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Topographics
ARTSY. https://www.artsy.net/gene/new-topographics
Dusseldorf School of photography.
The TATE. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/dusseldorf-school-photography
ARTSY. https://www.artsy.net/gene/dusseldorf-school-of-photography
A few years ago I came across a very slim, ornate volume at a car boot sale.
Recently, whilst tidying up for a room decoration, I came across it again. It’s entitled “Rocks Royal Birmingham Cabinet Album” and glorious little piece of Victoriana it is too.
Taken recently in Lincoln, for me at least, this image seems to hold much of what 2020 has become.
Boredom and the ennui generated by that. And yet so much has changed and is still yet to change. We are engulfed by a curious storm. One which is invisible to us and yet surrounds us.
Let’s hope we become free of its stultifying effects soon. Life cannot continue to be ‘on hold’. It just can’t.
Once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.
Haruki Murakami
This morning when I woke, I was thinking about pictures – this is not unusual for me. I think about images a lot – and this morning I thought about what makes a good picture. I take pictures – not so many under Covid restrictions because I work mainly on the street – but how do I know it’s a good picture? Firstly, I suppose, you have to define what constitutes a “good picture”, and as we are all different, then what makes a good picture to one does not to another; yes, it’s personal, as they say. There is no simple answer.
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