AI? Not I!

Dragons in the Backyard. Clarkesville, Georgia. One pleasant early fall day as my son Rob and I were wandering around northeast Georgia to see (and photograph) whatever of interest we might find, we were driving along a street that ran by the backyards of some houses, when Rob suddenly exclaimed "Dad! Look at that!" It was a cast metal dragon and an eagle in someone's backyard. So of course I stopped and made a few photographs.Could this picture have been created by AI? Of course. But who would have thought of it? The essence of photography is that it is photographic. It is a picture made by the action of light reflected from something that has objective reality onto a sensitized surface. Light rays bouncing off something that is really there go through a lens and are recorded onto film, a sensor of some kind, or something not yet invented, but whatever it is, it is "writing with light." The unique power of photography is derived from this direct connection to reality. When a…