Next Lesson: 1.2 How to Use This Course
1.1 Your Photography Business Tommorow
Hey!
Thank you for joining the course! I’m Alex, your trainer; I’ve been in the photography business for 16 years, and I ran courses and online classes for Nikon and Fujifilm. The last three years, I’ve spent researching and testing AI tools to build an AI-powered photography workflow. All that you’ll learn in this course is the result of these findings and practices.
But let’s skip this standard intro and jump straight to the point.
The photography business is going to change dramatically. The good news is that now you’re among those who are aware of it.
In this lesson, we’ll discuss how AI is transforming the photography industry. And from the next lesson, you’ll learn how this course can help you benefit from these changes.
Ok, first, let’s discuss why the old-style photography business is doomed. It sounds like clickbait, but still, it is already happening. I’m pretty sure you have seen all these tools that generate your portrait in one visual style or another.
Some startups already offer virtual photography services, where you can upload your images and get a business-style headshot for your LinkedIn profile.
I have seen several ongoing discussions on how accurate these generated images are or when they would achieve photo-realistic quality. However, the actual impact of generated images is that they reduce the value of all digital images, including professional photos.
The same thing has happened with the value of texts. When anyone can publish any written thought, basically anywhere, in a matter of seconds, people value each particular text way less than their ancestors did. Otherwise, Gutenberg’s invention wouldn’t be much of a deal back then.
The same will happen with images.
AI is not killing the photography industry. It just makes all the digital images less valuable. The consequence of this will be that people will pay less for photography services, making some of them obsolete.
But hear me out here; people will not, all of a sudden, ditch photographers and embrace AI. It is photographers who won’t be ready to work for a shorter price tag.
Previously, we photographers were competing with each other. And prices for our services reflected this. Now, we’ll compete with AI services. You can’t charge more for creating images with your camera than the cost of generating them with AI. Well, you technically can, but most of your clients will choose AI.
Still, in some photography genres, we can easily be more cost-effective than AI. If..! If we’ll use AI-powered tools.
So, what are these genres?
Brief disclaimer: in this course, we’ll keep aside film photography and other things that you can actually touch. It’s an exciting topic, but just not for this course.
Ok, first of all, you’re safe if you are creating memories for people. Whether it’s a family photo session or some private event, you’re hired to capture real memories. People don’t need fake memories. Unless we live in an episode of Black Mirror.
Next, your photography business is fine if you take images of some unique and unusual objects. While it’s more expensive to AI-generate images of such things correctly than to take real shots.
The same applies to event photography. Maybe at some point, it will be cheaper to generate AI reportage from a bunch of iPhone photos. However, this is not a real thing yet.
Finally, the segment of premium photography services will always be there. Like with premium tailors, there will always be people looking for an individual approach to photography.
Still, no matter how AI-proof your photography business is, the overall value of digital images will be lower. Therefore, this will make your average paycheck lower. And that’s why you need AI-powered workflow. Using AI tools, you’ll spend significantly less time culling and editing images. Thus, you’ll be able to work with more clients and continue to make satisfactory income.
At the beginning of this lesson, I told you that you are already aware of these changes. And this is crucial knowledge. Your advantage is that you are not pretending that everything is fine.
Things are going to move fast now. Some of our colleagues will be stuck in denial of the new reality, and sooner or later, their businesses will be decimated by the AI wave.
That’s why it makes sense to start adapting your workflow now so we can ride this wave. Let’s see how we can do this!