Hi, I am Scott Maxworthy, a photographer with over four decades of experience, and I am on a fascinating journey of exploration – a journey that merges the art of photography with the science of artificial intelligence.
I recently embarked on a unique project with the exceptional Friska Wirya – an international corporate change consultant. It began with a traditional photoshoot in my Sydney studio. The hundreds of images we captured were then fed into an artificial intelligence model. What transpired was truly extraordinary.
This project, however, isn’t merely about capturing and creating images. It’s about pondering deep questions: What defines creativity? Is it solely a human domain or can machines stake a claim in it? A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. But what if those words are a collaborative effort between human and machine?
This exploration with AI is about making connections. After all, at its heart, photography is about capturing a moment, an idea, and engaging with others. It’s not solely about the technology; it’s about using it as a tool to enhance the art, to create something that resonates with the viewer.
This journey parallels the historical shifts in the art world. It’s reminiscent of the era when portrait painters first faced the advent of photography or when musicians were introduced to electronic music. There’s always initial resistance to change, yet eventually, it becomes clear that the essence isn’t about the tool but the art it enables.
As Friska Wirya, who is also a change management consultant, eloquently put it, “Scott is one of those rare people that buck the trend. He’s approached the new and foreign with curiosity instead of contempt – and the results speak for themselves.”
The intersection of AI and creativity remains an enigma, but it’s one that I’m thrilled to be part of unraveling. This project with Friska is evidence of the possibilities that arise from the collaboration between humans and machines. It’s not a narrative of AI overpowering art, rather it’s about AI joining the creative process as a partner.
So, we step into the future, a symphony composed of traditional notes and innovative melodies. It promises to be an exhilarating journey, and I’m eager to see where it leads.
Background to this post
For the last few months of experimented with nearly all the consumer level “text to image” Ai generators such as Dalle-2, Craiyon, new Adobe FireFly and of course MidJourney (very quickly burning through my monthly subscription in just a couple of days). Where they are great at generating incredible new images they mostly fail at combining portraits with Ai.
Unable to accept the notion that “this is just the way it is” I began searching deeper to try and find a way – looking at the technology behind these tools and was then exposed to a whole new language and world of python programming, gitHub repositories and mathematical terms like matrixes and tensors – it was daunting to the say the least – my brain feeling overloaded as I tried to sleep and synergise the new information. Eventually I came across Stable Diffusion and after weeks of watching YouTube videos, reading Reddit threads and way to many failures I finally had a working version running on my computer and was ready to test.
