Authentic Imperfection

Worried that AI will replace photography?

A couple of years ago, I made a decision. I was going to use my photography to document my life. The places I’ve been, the places I’m going. And really try to capture what a place felt like.

Then AI image generation exploded. And suddenly my feed was flooded with these flawless landscapes, perfect golden hour shots, moody streets that never existed. All generated in seconds. I’d scroll through them and feel… nothing. Like staring at a Windows XP wallpaper.

And, instead of making me question my decision, it made it hit harder. Like, way harder. Because here was this technology pumping out technically perfect imagery at scale, and it only confirmed what I’d already been feeling. That the photo itself was never really the point.

Everyone’s worried AI is gonna replace photography. Take over. Make us all redundant. And honestly? I reckon they’re looking at it wrong.

Because here’s what AI can’t do. It can’t drag you out of bed at 4am to chase a sunrise you weren’t sure would even show up. It can’t make you stand on a street corner in the cold, watching light shift across a wall for twenty minutes, just because something about it felt right. It can’t make you notice the old bloke at the train station holding flowers, clearly waiting for someone, and feel that little gut punch that says take the photo.

That stuff only happens when you’re there. Actually there. Not prompting. Not generating. Just paying attention.

That’s part of why I shoot with the Ricoh GR III and is my true everyday carry. No fancy screen. No EVF. Fixed 28mm lens. Shutter speed tops out early. Full of limitations. But that’s kind of the point.

This little camera is my entire life philosophy crammed into something that fits in a jeans pocket. Travel days, a local cafe, catching up with friends and family. It goes everywhere. I just document the in-between moments. The stuff that’s not impressive enough for Instagram but real enough that I’ll want to come back to it in ten years.

Pure experience.

And when you photograph a moment, something weird happens. You can relive it. Like, actually relive it. Not just remember it, but feel it again. The temperature, the noise, the way the light was hitting the street. When someone else looks at that photo, you’re opening a portal for them to step through and experience that moment with you.

That’s the bit AI can’t touch. Not because the technology isn’t good enough. But because it wasn’t there.

It’s like the difference between watching a movie and reading someone’s synopsis of it. You know that scene in Star Wars where Luke is just standing there, staring at the twin suns? No dialogue. Nothing technically happening. But you feel everything. His restlessness. The longing. That pull toward something bigger.

A prompt didn’t create that. Someone who understood what it felt like to want more from life did.

Look, I’m not anti-AI. I use it for plenty of stuff. Lightroom’s AI dust removal and image upscaling? Yeah, I use those. I’ve even started using AI to speed run through file organisation and trip planning, automating the busy admin work that used to eat into actual shooting time.

But the photography itself? That’s different. That’s not about getting every pixel perfect or nailing the ideal composition. It’s messier than that. It’s about the real choices I make when I’m standing somewhere, in a moment, deciding what deserves to be kept.

Sometimes I get it wrong. Most of the time, honestly. I come home with a card full of duds and maybe one or two shots that make me go, yeah, that’s the one. But even the duds happened because I showed up. I was there. I noticed something. And that act of noticing, of slowing down enough to actually engage with a place instead of just walking through it, that’s the whole point.

AI can generate a million images before I’ve even found my lens cap.

But it’ll never know what it felt like to be there.

And that’s enough.