[00:00:00] AI has gotten so good over the past year that I think photographers should be worried. Apps like photo rooms, magic Studio lets people take a phone photo and transform it into a scene from a full scale production view. AI lets companies create lifestyle photos without the need to hire a model, and we're just in the early stages right now as AI is getting better and better every.
Photographers should be worried, but not in the way that you would think. At the end of this podcast, I'm walking you through the exact steps I'm taking to prepare for AI's takeover. AI is already here and it's consistently getting better and better. Welcome to the Creative Biz Launch Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your creative business and scale to six figures.
Whether you're a photographer, filmmaker, or designer, you'll find something of value here.
People in the photography community have been saying that photography is dying for decades now. When digital replaced film photographers thought that was the end, and then [00:01:00] smartphone cameras came along and everyone cried that photographers were a dying breed, but somehow were still around and now AI is coming into the mix and we have the same old song and dance.
Photographers are being replaced, but should we be worried as photographers? Is there something to it or is this another one of those times when people are overhyping a technology? Personally, I'm taking steps to prepare for AI, and I'll walk you through these. At the end of this podcast. AI is already here and it's affecting massive parts of the photography space.
Sony released the A seven R five not too long ago, and that uses AI and it's auto focus. The camera knows where you want to focus, and that's exactly where it will focus in the. If you're photographing a subject and they go high behind a tree for a second, the camera now knows not to switch. Focus to the tree.
Rather, it keeps the focus on the person that's no longer in the scene until they come back. It's like the camera can read your mind. [00:02:00] We're already using AI in our editing as well. Lightroom can intelligently detect what the subject is of a scene and it'll select the subject for you. No need to go in and use a brush tool.
The software just does it for you, and that makes your life so much easier. It used to be so hard to select the subject. Now you can do this in just one or two seconds. There are softwares with intelligent sky replacements where you can replace a cloudy sky with a sunny sky. You could have done this in Photoshop earlier, but that would've taken you a very long time.
Now you can just do it in a couple clicks, and then their software is that lets you clean up all the blemishes in a shot with just a single click. You can see how easy AI is making the editing process for you. This is a great thing for photographers. You can now focus more on the actual creativity.
Rather on the technical work that goes into editing.
So,
so far I've mentioned cameras and softwares, and these are just tools for us to help us with our photography workflows. They don't threaten us as photographers, they just [00:03:00] make us more efficient. Right. But how about the apps I mentioned at the start of the video, Photo room's. Magic Studio, for example, can take a boring old iPhone photo with poor lighting and poor composition and transform it into a compelling product image that looks incredible.
Our business is gonna start using this instead of real product photographers. , you should think about how powerful this technology actually is. Everyone who's selling products online has a phone that can take quality photos. Now they can just take a product photo on their phone, put it into Magic Studio, and
boom, they'll have a set of product photos that they can use on their.
When I tried this out myself, I obviously was not blown away by the results. The photos obviously looked a little fake. They looked like someone photoshopped in an energy drink can into the scene rather than it being a professional photo shoot. But I think this technology is getting better and better.
Very, very fast. It's hard to estimate how quickly this technology improves because [00:04:00] AI trains itself to get better, faster, and faster. So right now, these photos aren't gonna trick anyone cuz they're clearly poor quality. They look like a can if you squint really hard, but they're not tricking anyone here.
But this is the first version of it. It came out just a few months ago, so imagine what it's gonna look like in three months, six months, a year from now, five years from now. It's got a lot of potential here, and yeah, this technology is not good enough to get away with competing with pro photographers at the time, but, It's only going to be a matter of time until it does.
And what happens when the client no longer needs a pro photographer to take their e-commerce photos? Well, this is a complicated question as I'm a pro photographer, but the role of proc photographers will change. The photographer is still gonna be the creative director here. They're gonna be the ones that come up with a gallery of photos that they believe will sell the most products for that.
So you have to ask yourself a question. What kind of prog photographer are you? [00:05:00] Are you a photographer that just listens to the client and requires their direction to work? Or are you a prog photographer that takes the reins on the shoot, does all the creative work, and creates a gallery with the intention of increasing sales for that brand?
That ladder photographer will be still relevant when AI gets really, really, And no, they won't be replaced completely because they're still going to be the ones creating the photos, but they won't be using a camera anymore. They'll be using the software instead. Let's look at another piece of software aimed at replacing lifestyle photographers.
View ai. That's V U e.ai is another piece of software, and it will be able to eliminate the need to hire a model for lifestyle photography. The software, however, still requires a high quality product photo to generate the rest of the images. So what you do here is you take a really high quality photo of, let's say, a piece of clothing that you want the model to wear.
You upload that photo into the software. You choose the AI model you want to [00:06:00] use and view. AI spits out a AI generated. Of the model wearing your clothes. This is super cool, but can be very scary for lifestyle photographers to see. Lifestyle photo shoots are some of the most expensive ones for a company to invest in, and they do give a lot of value because they provide a human element to the shoot.
And if you're a fashion brand, lifestyle photos are non-negotiable for you. But with ai, the human element is now computer generat. It's not a real human, it's just an image of a computer generated human pulled from thousands and millions of different images. Now, to a normal person, this will be indistinguishable, but will people still be able to tell a difference here?
Will photographers be able to tell a difference here? That's where the question comes in. Is there anything. That will be lost in this type of photo shoot. The person may be indistinguishable from a real person. So what is lost in this kind of lifestyle image? When I'm recording this in [00:07:00] 2023, it seems like something will be lost, but I don't know how good this technology will get and what the norm will become.
The consumer won't know that this is a AI generated person. So if a company wants to save money yet still use lifestyle photography, they're going to use the software. If you're a photographer, you might feel a little uneasy after hearing everything that AI is capable of, and you're probably saying, okay, but it's not as good as a real photographer.
And while that is true, right now, this technology is getting better and. I'm telling you right now, as photographers, we need to either adapt or die. Those are the options. As photographers, we need to embrace this new technology as it becomes better and better.
Right now, inside my photography business, I only spend about a third of my time actually doing photography. That's me being behind the camera. The other time is devoted to client acquisition operations, managing my team. Thinking of creative briefs, all that good stuff. When AI takes over the photography space completely, I'll still be [00:08:00] spending at least two thirds of my time doing those business tasks.
The remainder will be me using AI for fulfillment rather than my camera. I will be using AI to generate the image rather than use my camera to do that. Right now, I'm behind the camera. I, third of the time I work, I don't edit my own photos for clients because I have an editor doing that on my. It's been probably two years now since I've edited my own work, and it doesn't make me any less of a photographer in my client's eyes.
They are paying to work with my company PR productions. They're not paying for me to actually be doing every step of the process. They just want the result. So where does AI come into this mix? When I replace myself with ai, what will the client think of this? Right now they don't care that I'm using an editor.
So will they care that I'm using ai? I'm not.
What I'm about to say next is very, very important to listen closely. There's gonna be a difference between being a photographer and having a photography business. Photographers are going to be replaced by [00:09:00] AI photography businesses. Don't have that same risk. Okay? When you're a photographer, you're just the person behind the camera.
When you operate as a photography business, you're there to give results to your clients. When I was considering myself as a photographer, all I knew was how to take incredible photos. I didn't know marketing. I didn't know sales or how to manage a team. I didn't know the results that clients. And if this is you right now, my channel, this podcast has dozens of videos and podcasts on how to run a photography business that you can learn from.
Now. When I decided I wanted to start making money from photography, I became a photography business. I learned sales, marketing, and operations, and this has allowed me to make a really good living by using a camera.
What is a photography business? Anyways, I'd argue that there are two parts of it. One is client acquisition, and two is fulfillment.
Client acquisition is exactly what it sounds like. It's acquiring and retaining clients. This is a sales and marketing part of the business. You convince people to give you [00:10:00] money in exchange for a service. Fulfillment is the photography side of the.
People gave you money. Now it's time to deliver on your promise by creating incredible photos. AI is going to change this fulfillment side of the equation. In five years, maybe we won't be using our cameras as much and most of our fulfillment work will be done at the computer. I don't know how fulfillment is gonna change, but it definitely will.
What isn't changing though is client acquisition. It's never been more important to learn how to acquire clients. Now, if you can master client acquisition, then you don't have much to worry about. When AI ultimately takes over the photography,
Learning the business skills to compliment your photography is a requirement in today's world. If you're relying on referrals or a platform like Upwork to get clients, you're gonna struggle in the next few years. But if you can actually build a business with systems so you can call your own, then you'll thrive in this new landscape.
Fulfillment is changing. Client acquisition is not. That's all I got today. My name is Chris Petta. This is the Creative Biz Launch Podcast. If you have an [00:11:00] extra 15 seconds, please rate the show on your podcast Ring platform. It really helps spread the message of the show. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next time.
