I remember the day my mother called and said, “your father died.” I was 25. The whole world grinded to a halt. A sense of calm and gratitude washed over me, it was finally over, he didn’t have to suffer anymore. Cancer had eaten away at him for so many years and no matter what I did, I could never help.
Even as a small child I wanted to protect him, not because he needed me to, but because in my mind he was so terribly old, older than my friends’ parents, older than anyone. He was 47.
I started lining up my teddy bears and toy animals in bed every night. It had to be done in a particular order, “This guy goes over here to the left, then bear, then lion, then you and you”. To me they weren’t teddy bears or toy lions at all, they were real, they were there to guard the world. And him. If I did everything right, they would make sure my father wouldn’t die.
When the toys came to life, we had long conversations about strategy, I told them I needed them to protect him, to keep him alive.
I now know it didn’t work.
Today it’s been many years since he passed, I’ve grown up to be somewhat of a man myself. I think back on that child and the measures he took to make sure his father would be safe. How much he wanted that.
Because mostly I think I needed him
to protect me.
#jonaspetersonprintshop #ai #midjourney #notphotography
]]>
The idea behind “Youth is wasted on the young” was to celebrate the so called old, a comment on ageism if you want. A positive quiet homage to people who’ve seen more than us, been there, done that and I wanted their confidence and pride to be seen. I used fashion to show off their personalities, their attitude and inner rebels shining through the facade of age. I’m a professional photographer and interested in both styling and fashion, but these are not actual photos and the clothes are not real. Instead I’ve used computer software to create the scenes, the people and what they’re wearing. I give specific direction using words only to a program, lenses, angles, camera choice, color theme, colors, styling, backgrounds, attitude and overall look and the artificial intelligence goes to work, it sends back suggestions and more often than not it’s completely wrong, so I try other ways to describe what I’m after, change wording, move phrases around and try to get the AI to understand the mood. It’s frustrating mostly, the AI is still learning, but getting any collaborator to understand you can be difficult no matter if it’s a human or a machine.
After a long stretch of trial and error I get closer to a style and look I want and after that it comes down to curation, picking the renders I believe go well together, I start making it a series. To me the process is similar to that of a film director’s, I direct the AI the same way they would talk to an actor or set designer, it’s a process, we try over and over again until we get it right.
Should I get all the credit? God, no, the software creates with my help and direction, it’s a collaboration between a real brain and an artificial one. But it’s also just the first step, I use a number of other applications to finesse the first crude results I’m getting.
]]>