Really good article. I'm surprised to see AI generated images showing up in toy photography; I'm used to seeing them over in the anime scene, where at least I get the thinking: learning to draw anime characters real good takes a lot of time and effort. But toy photography is such an easy thing to explore and dabble in, and is frankly such a niche subject, it feels weird to try and get clout that way.
Love seeing someone starting up a Flickr group in the year of our Luigi 2023. That site just keeps trucking. Though if I may ask, what made you decide on the 1/18 scale maximum limit? I can kind of understand wanting to keep the 1/6 stuff out, since it's such a different beast, but 1/12 seems to me to mostly "fit" in the same techniques and assumptions. (Ie mostly molded detail, few fabric goods, etc.) Was it just to keep the place from being overtaken by 1/12 Star Wars stuff?
Thank you for the article. I certainly come more from the building than from the photography side of the LEGO hobby (although I do tend to enjoy the image-oriented parts of the process more and more lately), but I find this trend very concerning (as I do the general trend of employing AI any- and everywhere possible).
But what really trips me up is the doubling down that you mention, too. I could understand people just not paying attention to the hashtags they use. I do pay attention and I don't like people just throwing random words at a wall, but at least I could scratch that up as laziness or carelessness, it's "just Instagram" afterall. But when I then see people react to the "nice photo" comments nonchalantly or even, and I've seen that too, actually answering questions about the process as if it were a real photo, that is 100% dishonesty. And in fact, it messed me up to question my own assessment of the picture as being 99% sure it was AI. I thought, well, maybe it is a photo afterall. But no, they were simply lieing! I also wanted to react to those comments saying "it's not a photo", but then I thought it's just a drop in the desert and I can't be the Insta comment police.
In a time where it will become increasingly important to assert our position as humans in every part of society, including our position as human artists who put genuine consideration into their art, it is important to counter the watering down of terms and distinctions, not exacerbate it with such disingenuity.
Having recently shared a few AI generated images, the first thing I did when I saw your post on IG was to check my hashtags - and glad to find out I haven't used any photography hashtags on them. The one exception is on my blog post hashtags, and only because I talk about photography in the article as well as AI generated images.
I have stopped looking for followers and/or engagement a while ago and accepted I'm doing this for myself. I don't even take proper pictures anymore, but because I used to, I consider myself a very amateur photographer. Even though I didn't notice photography hashtags on AI generated images, I would probably be annoyed by people calling them photographs if I did.
Like you said, generating AI images is a very quick way of... well, generating images. Having spent a few hours on Bing, I have over 100 images I love. Minifigures that would pass as my sigfig (or my family's) doing daily things. It's satisfactory for someone who can't create those scenes in real life, or take pictures with such good lighting. It's wonderful to create non-existing minifigures, too. But somewhere deep down it hurts, because I know they aren't truly mine, even though they are near perfect. I think that "deep down" was the reason I created a new hashtag for them, saying AI images instead of toy pictures...
Anyway, I don't want to write a whole other article here :) I joined the Flickr group, hopefully it won't slip my mind and I'll be able to "band together" with you and "make cool shit" :)
Really good article. I'm surprised to see AI generated images showing up in toy photography; I'm used to seeing them over in the anime scene, where at least I get the thinking: learning to draw anime characters real good takes a lot of time and effort. But toy photography is such an easy thing to explore and dabble in, and is frankly such a niche subject, it feels weird to try and get clout that way.
Love seeing someone starting up a Flickr group in the year of our Luigi 2023. That site just keeps trucking. Though if I may ask, what made you decide on the 1/18 scale maximum limit? I can kind of understand wanting to keep the 1/6 stuff out, since it's such a different beast, but 1/12 seems to me to mostly "fit" in the same techniques and assumptions. (Ie mostly molded detail, few fabric goods, etc.) Was it just to keep the place from being overtaken by 1/12 Star Wars stuff?
Thank you for the article. I certainly come more from the building than from the photography side of the LEGO hobby (although I do tend to enjoy the image-oriented parts of the process more and more lately), but I find this trend very concerning (as I do the general trend of employing AI any- and everywhere possible).
But what really trips me up is the doubling down that you mention, too. I could understand people just not paying attention to the hashtags they use. I do pay attention and I don't like people just throwing random words at a wall, but at least I could scratch that up as laziness or carelessness, it's "just Instagram" afterall. But when I then see people react to the "nice photo" comments nonchalantly or even, and I've seen that too, actually answering questions about the process as if it were a real photo, that is 100% dishonesty. And in fact, it messed me up to question my own assessment of the picture as being 99% sure it was AI. I thought, well, maybe it is a photo afterall. But no, they were simply lieing! I also wanted to react to those comments saying "it's not a photo", but then I thought it's just a drop in the desert and I can't be the Insta comment police.
In a time where it will become increasingly important to assert our position as humans in every part of society, including our position as human artists who put genuine consideration into their art, it is important to counter the watering down of terms and distinctions, not exacerbate it with such disingenuity.
Having recently shared a few AI generated images, the first thing I did when I saw your post on IG was to check my hashtags - and glad to find out I haven't used any photography hashtags on them. The one exception is on my blog post hashtags, and only because I talk about photography in the article as well as AI generated images.
I have stopped looking for followers and/or engagement a while ago and accepted I'm doing this for myself. I don't even take proper pictures anymore, but because I used to, I consider myself a very amateur photographer. Even though I didn't notice photography hashtags on AI generated images, I would probably be annoyed by people calling them photographs if I did.
Like you said, generating AI images is a very quick way of... well, generating images. Having spent a few hours on Bing, I have over 100 images I love. Minifigures that would pass as my sigfig (or my family's) doing daily things. It's satisfactory for someone who can't create those scenes in real life, or take pictures with such good lighting. It's wonderful to create non-existing minifigures, too. But somewhere deep down it hurts, because I know they aren't truly mine, even though they are near perfect. I think that "deep down" was the reason I created a new hashtag for them, saying AI images instead of toy pictures...
Anyway, I don't want to write a whole other article here :) I joined the Flickr group, hopefully it won't slip my mind and I'll be able to "band together" with you and "make cool shit" :)