AI is such a hot topic on the blockchain these days, isn't it?

I know, I know, I am not a big stakeholder here, so many will think, some will say - "Nobody is asking him, he isn't important here!" and yet, I feel I have to share my personal perspective to the matter, without throwing any judgement.

So here we go...

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My educated guess is everyone who has made or has tried to make their living of photography will tell you that the best paid gigs are events where one or many photographers are hired to cover the specific event.

Covering an event is not easy and definitely isn't a job for everyone. The clients, persons or legal entities, usually pay for the quality of the visuals photographers create. High quality photographs are a result of a long learning curve, investments that are usually above EUR 10k and a lot of post-processing work once the actual event and shooting are over. Shooting an event is sometimes physically challenging, and quite often, mentally challenging too. Trust me on that, sometimes events are just exhausting! Often, it takes for days after the event is done for the images to be properly edited.

Here comes the point that a photographer who is self-employed, as myself, cannot shoot events very often. Not to mention, I consider myself more of a travel- than an event- photographer. So, even more planning is involved and travels from Europe are not cheap either.

For the last, somewhere between 5 and 10 years, I've been using some of my time between the "events" to develop better my Stock Photography side hustle.

What is Stock Photography, you may ask. To put it shortly and simply, it is selling one's visuals through established online agencies who find customers who need your photographs. The artists gets a small cut, somewhere between 10%-30%, that's before tax and other transfer and currency exchange fees.

As this is getting bigger than I expected, let me break it to you this way - unless you started selling stock in the last century, it can't be a full-time job, as it doesn't pay even the utility bills anymore.

The moment AI was allowed as a competitive content on these platform, it was a game changer. This business is highly competitive and now it is almost impossible to make a proper sell. After trying more than a dozen of agencies, I ended with uploading my visual to only two of them - Alamy and Adobe.

The process of getting a photo from the camera to the client includes the steps where once the photo is taken, prepared by providing title, keywords and description, it has to pass an internal review by the stock agency.

Prior AI, this approval by Adobe was taking between 2 and 5 business days, with my experience being 3 days in average.

Now, this approval takes between 1 and 3 months!!!

This is a period the photo isn't available to be sold as it's not visible to the potential customers.

Even worse, once the agencies were flooded by AI generated images, they began to reject quality photos on a mass scale. This approval process is highly subjective as I know people who once their works are rejected, they resubmit them and this time, oh, miracle, they get approved!

Here is what makes the picture even worse. In the last couple of months I stumbled upon several contributor accounts, who have managed to upload tens of thousands of AI generated images. In just two months they've managed to create a volume of "wow" works similar to what took me more than 5 years to accomplish.

If you're still reading, does that ring any bells?

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Those "content creators":

• They don't need to plan and pay for any travels.
• They don't need to own and operate any photo equipment.
• They don't need to carry heavy backpacks and tripods, and stay up late to recharge the camera batteries.
• They don't need to pay subscriptions for photo editing software.
• They don't need a powerful computer to run Photoshop and Lightroom.
• They don't need to spend a lot of time to post-process the images.

All they need is to pay for access to the AI generative service or install it locally and avoid the payment at all.

Feels fair to you?

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Probably soon comes the day I say to myself "the hell with all that doomed art nonsense" and I return to my previous field of work - programming.

It wouldn't be surprising if I sharpen my Python programming skills and I begin working on one of the AI projects, making AI even better. Obviously this is what the world needs. By the way, it took me more than two hours to finish this post. AI will do this in 10 seconds. Are we all doomed?

Here is the link to the Wiki page explaining Stock Photography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_photography

Here is a sunrise moment I captured of a place that is thousand kilometers away from home and where I had to wake up several days in a row at about 4 AM just to drive for other tens of kilometers and capture few perfect moments. Pretty sure if not today, it will be AI-generatable soon. In under 10 seconds too.

Copyright @LightCaptured 2024	DDH_4710.jpg
Camera Body Model:	Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Post-processing software used:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 13.5 (Windows)
Exposure Time:	0.1 seconds; Shutter Speed: 1/10
Aperture:	f/32
ISO:	100
Exposure Compensation:	0.6666666667
Focal Length:	100
Lens Model:	EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM

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Please note that this post is AI-free and created exclusively for the STEEM blockchain.

Buy my stock photos at Alamy: https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/112427.html

Buy my stock photos at Adobe Stock: https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/206416265/lightcaptured

Follow me on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@lightcaptured (Decentralized social network for my insta-type selected photographs and short posts)

Copyright: LightCaptured
All the photographs, digital art and text in my posts, unless specified otherwise, are my own property and created by me.
If you wish to use any of my works, please drop me a line!

Have a great day!

Here is an uncomplete list of some of my equipment I use on a regular basis:

Cameras
	Canon EOS 5D Mark III
	Canon EOS M5
	Canon EOS 550D
Lenses
	Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM
	Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM
	Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM
	Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
	Canon EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM
	Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM
	Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
	7artisans 35mm f/1.2
Strobes	Dynaphos Speedster
Flashes	Metz
Tripods and Mono-pods	Manfrotto
	Benro

The divider I use in my posts I have created in Adobe Express.