2025-03-04 Synthetic Photography SIG meeting notes

We met online using ZOOM 6:00pm-8:30pm

You are invited to join us on ZOOM for the "Synthetic Photography SIG". I expect that this will be a controversial SIG as the topic of AI generated art seems to polarize people into 2 camps, they either love the concept that now they can make beautiful art or they hate the idea that "unskilled" people can make better art than they can. I am sure that we will have different views, but I hope that we can get along and respect everyone's views. I want to expand the focus of the Synthetic Photography SIG to include other image editing tools and techniques while maintaining our main focus on AI tools and techniques.

"I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall (not Voltaire)

ATTENDEES
Mike Barry
Mark Bolles
Steve Eis
Jim Fellion
Jim Limburg
Jim Lipscomb
Walter Lyons

1. We discussed creating Car Caricatures using different AI tools. It was a good learning exercise but we weren't very happy with the results.

2. We discussed other images created by AI tools

3. We discussed how members are using AI tools right now. ChatGPT to write captions for social media images, some InvokeAi to create images, but mainly Photoshop AI to clean up images. We also talked about how there seems to be two camps, one which hates AI with a passion and considers it stealing and not art, and the other camp including many professional photographers (Lindsay Adler and Kristina Sherk and Sebastian Michaels) that are embracing AI because it makes editing easier and gives us the opportunity to create better images that we might not be able t create otherwise.

4. We discussed DeepSeek R2 which may be here by May, and Alexa+ which is available now with AI Agents.

5. We talked about why we make images, with and without AI help.

6. I have asked everyone to create at least one image using AI tools that is wall-worthy. Steve has joined our SIG and we suggested that he take a look at the meeting notes to see which AI tools we have already discussed in our meetings. Steve: If you have any questions about getting started with some of these tools, please ask for help, most of our SIG members will be happy to show you how to get started with their favorite AI tool.

RESOURCES (Where you can find sources of inspiration)

AGENDA FOR OUR NEXT SYNTHETIC PHOTOGRAPHY SIG MEETING - Tue 4/1/2025 @6:00pm
1. Discuss Wall-Worthy images and other images that we have created with AI or editing tools.
2. Discuss questions, ethics, techniques, what is happening with AI in general
3. Decide what we want to do at the next meeting

If there is anything related to AI that you would like to discuss at our SIG meeting, please email me so I can add them to our agenda.

Please email Mike, info@fcdcc.com, when you find mistakes, missing information or if you have suggestions for the Synthetic Photography SIG and I will try to address the issues.