AI photos vs real photos: Memories Can Only Be Born Out of Living…

PHOTOGRAPHY · PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER · TANYA EIVIN PHOTOGRAPHY

By Tanya Metaxa | Austin, TX & New York, NY-based photographer |

OK, let me admit first that I was always an avid reader.

Always.

Probably from the day when, at the age of 3, I was able to hold a heavy book in my small hands and read a full sentence without help. From that day on and all the way through my teenage years, I was never seen without a book. They became my best friends, my escape from everyday reality and from the world that wasn’t always kind to me. Lucky for me, our entire living room was ‘consumed’ by wall-to-wall bookcases filled with books. Treasures, in my eyes. More of a library than a living room, really. And I was totally ok with that. Also, ‘lucky for me’, my mom was a Russian language and literature teacher. A lot of what she had been teaching to her 7th and 8th graders was rubbing off on me before I even started kindergarten.

The World I Never Wanted to Live In

But there was one genre I never favored or was able to bring myself to love: sci-fi. It sounded so artificial (pun intended). It was so dry and technical that I could only imagine future engineers or scientists eat this stuff up. The descriptions of the surroundings and events were so hard to stomach. I had an inhibited imagination and wild emotional responses. Even in my weirdest dreams, I could not envision the world we would be living in today having a conversation about AI photos vs real photos.

The Shift towards AI

There is an enormous shift toward everything Ai, for better and for worse. In my eyes — for worse. Because, today, Ai can make decisions for you — on every level.

It starts with something as simple as sorting your emails and deciding what is important to you and worth showing, and what is not. Hiding what was deemed ‘not important’ without consulting with you. It decides whether you get to speak to a real person on the phone. It insists that you spill your frustration into an algorithmic chat in hopes that a real human being will read it and follow up with a viable solution. Or trying to write an article with a given prompt that is supposed to guide Chat GPT to sound more like you and less like an oil residue you are trying to wash off your hands for 30 min before getting frustrated and letting it stay under your fingernails. I won’t be surprised if I learned that Ai is also already behind 80% of hiring decisions. Making medical decisions, writing your medicine prescriptions, and don’t even let me go any further.

So, maybe my early-days rejection of sci-fi as a literary genre wasn’t even that strange? Maybe it was a full-on rejection of the lifestyle that knows nothing but the world of robotic machinery and algorithms?… Perhaps so.

What Your Grandchildren Will Actually Inherit

I still reject it today in most forms. And as a photographer, a real human guide into what becomes your future memories and emotional neuroconnections, and the ONLY things that will still matter to you one day, I can shout it from the rooftops. Until I am blue in the face: Ai is NOT your friend in this department. Nor is it your solution. Don’t even have me started on ‘create your perfect memories with a family photoshoot’ …using an Ai app. Ha! Because it’s already a thing now. Alongside your perfect headshots, or that slew of trendy seasonal ‘photoshoots’ where your face is extracted from a random selfie and is inserted into the Scream movie still or a very pink and red glittery candy cane scene.

Easy? Yes. Fun? Maybe, for the first 5 seconds. Until you see the next 130 identical photos of your friends using the same trend. This is the reality of AI photos vs real photos.

Don’t choose AI Family Photos

Now, tell me one thing: can you imagine looking at a photo of your grandma and grandpa on their wedding day, holding hands and smiling warmly for the camera, looking happy and excited, and knowing that this was all a lie? An Ai-generated image of something that never actually happened? It wasn’t real, it was never a part of your family story, it simply never took place. Ah ah, don’t even start with ‘buts’. Simply answer that for me, — but mostly, for yourself. And knowing that this event, this moment, this day, this slice of life was never real, — would you still cherish this photograph with the same nostalgia and sentiments? I think we both know the answer to this question.

Now, imagine your grand-grandchildren looking at an Ai-generated picture of you, because they’ve never seen a single real photo of you. Because you feel you are not photogenic, not worthy of being photographed professionally, or too shy / busy / incapable of taking directions or not being good with eye to eye connection. Imagine looking at a beautiful picture of your family where everyone is smiling at the same time, everyone looks happy and relaxed, and everybody’s outfits are in perfect harmony and order. Does it even remotely sound like a one-in-a-million chance picture that your family can take? I seriously doubt it.

Real photos don’t play by AI’s algoritm

Life plays by a different set of rules than Ai does. There are no written algorithm codes, but plenty of surprises, disappointments, happy endings, new or strengthened synaptic connections between neurons in your brain that are now wired to help you remember that experience as a series of highly emotional memories. But memories can only be born out of the lived-through experiences. No Ai can give them to you. They can simulate it in the future, when this technology becomes easily accessible. But they cannot give you the real thing.

It is robbing you of living your life ‘for real’, leaving you with picture perfect (pun clearly intended) images but without the history, human memories, emotions attached to them. A product of an algorithm that, sarcastically enough, cannot even be taught about emotions and feelings at a satisfactory level to replicate them all.

Go live and create real memories

Now, go create REAL memories, allow yourself to FEEL real emotions, talk to real people, gather your family, go get your dog, feel really uncomfortable at first in front of that camera, and realize later that you are actually glad you did. Because now, you have forever valuable pieces of the real you captured in photographs that carry your human DNA and will soon enough become some of the most valuable and cherished possessions you and your family will ever have. Also, the evidence that you were REAL.

Here’s my hand. Hold on to it, let’s go make it happen.

tanyaeivinphotography.com/contact

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tanya Metaxa is the owner of Tanya Eivin Photography and a self-proclaimed Portrait Maven — because she is one. Based between Austin, TX and New York, NY, she has spent the last five years photographing couples, kids, pets, and the humans behind brands. If not today, when?

tanyaeivinphotography.com · studio@tanyaeivinphotography.com · (512) 866-6565