Passionately human

By now, most everybody out there has seen what AI can do. It’s cool. But it’s a little bit … samesies.

You know what I mean. Perhaps you remember the trend that blew through round about halloween, where the person was laying in bed, talking on the phone. Hang on:

Here you go. This is nobody, as far as I know, just a random generated of a default female laying in bed and talking on the phone. In October I saw dozens, possibly hundreds of these in my feed. Heck, I even created one for myself.

To do this, I uploaded a selfie of myself and told it “do an image like the one above, but use me.”

And it created this. And you know what? It’s pretty good. I wasn’t wearing clothes in this shot (it was just shoulders up; get your mind out of the gutter), so it put me in a shirt and jeans. There was a strong directional light on my face, and it added that light to the rest of the shot. You can see the highlights on the sheet, and the shadows from the head on the shoulder.

It’s not perfect; the telephone cord doesn’t cast a shadow, there’s this weird highlight on Ghostface’s lip that comes out of nowhere, And why are there four people on the Nirvana poster? Dave, Krist, Kurt. That’s three members. Three! (And are they wearing tuxes? What madness is this?)

But if this were going past in your social media feeds? I’m betting nobody would bat an eye at that. It’s so much better than where it was a couple years back when I asked for a kinky santa claus in handcuffs and got this (warning; it’s not pretty):

Brr. It feels like Christmas at H.R. Giger’s house….

Here’s the same(ish) instructions as given to Nano Banana a few minutes ago.

I shall call this one: I saw mommy….

It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than what happened above. No third (or fourth) arms, no backward outfits…no nightmares after looking at the image.

Which brings us to the question: if I can do this with Nano Banana now, with the promise of even better fidelity in the future, what am I even doing here? If someone can type in a few words, upload a photo of themselves and get a sexy photo with ghostface or santa or of themselves, why bother with going to the trouble of actually setting up the lights, of finding a sexy santa to hold the cuffs? Why bother with this whole photography thing?

If all I was looking for was to create interesting images, then it might be okay to just type in a prompt to Nano Banana, or whatever comes after Nano Banana.

But my goal with photography is not just to create cool images. Yes, cool images are, erm, cool, but the Beyond Boudoir Experience is about so much more.

I’m not going to talk about the dark side of AI. (Forget deepfakes, what about like all those nudifying apps like Grok…and the way people pass along AI images as factual). All technology has the potential to be used for good or for ill. This is about something different.

Because first off, the Beyond Boudoir Experience? It’s an experience. Have you seen those photos I took with the person at the base of a waterfall? Those are actually taken at a waterfall. And those photos of the snowboarder standing atop a mountain in the winter? Were taken at the top of a mountain. In winter. And yes, I know there are people who take photos against a green screen and then photoshop people into an image of them on a beach, or in front of a castle. But I’d much rather take you to said beach or said castle. Why? Because it’s not just about the images. It’s about being there. Who do you think has a better story? Person 1 who will tell their grandkids about that time they hiked 10 km up to this mountain peak, then took off their clothes and ran around in an alpine meadow or Person 2, who went to a nameless building in the industrial part of town, then stood in front of a piece of green fabric for an hour?

And sure, you might not want to climb a mountain or fly to Slovakia to take pictures at an honest-to-goodness castle. Maybe you just want some images of you at home. That can be an experience, too.

Second, using AI to create images that are not really you can be detrimental to your well-being. Yes, they can be fun, and it’s a lot easier to type in a command than to set up a shoot with a photographer, but they can lead to a distorted self-image.

AI images are frequently flawless. And, while each photographer has a different approach to retouching, my goal is to reflect you. If it is a zit? It’s gone. If it’s a birthmark? It’s you. AI doesn’t sit there for agonized moments, trying to determine if that’s a zit or a freckle. It just kills them all and leaves the digital bodies for God to sort out. Worse, AI will take and present a body that is not yours, and there becomes a disconnect between the you you see in the image and the you you see in the mirror. And unlike when you see a real picture of yourself and think “that isn’t me,” and it is, and it lifts your spirit, there are some psychologists out there who say that looking at an AI image of you and thinking “that isn’t me,” because it actually isn’t can bring you down. It can lead to dissatisfaction with your appearance. This is called Filter Dysmorphia, blurring the line between what is real and what is not.

Finally, there’s the fact that the images created on a Beyond Boudoir experience are real. Nevermind (see what I did there? Because of the Nirvana reference above…? Sigh. My genius is truly underappreciated…I’ll start again.) Nevermind that AI images are getting better and better all the time, there’s always going to be a level of unreality that these images. Cords aren’t going to cast shadows. Skin is going to be just a little too rubbery. The background a little too perfect. All these elements and more all add up to a level of unreality that I don’t think will ever go away.

And life? Life is messy. I would rather capture a real smile than have AI create a perfect one based on what it thinks you should look like. Sure, in real life your teeth aren’t perfectly straight and you squint. But it’s you, and that is what makes it special. Pefect is…boring. Sanitized. Lifeless. Give me a real person with all her flaws and foibles and contradictions who is willing to laugh and dance and sing and … other things, because that is what makes people interesting.

This is not a unique idea. My musical taste tends towards prog rock and metal, but I have a soft spot for John Legend’s All of Me.

It’s a sappy love song, but I love the way it doesn’t idealize the person or the relationship, and the chorus sums it up:

'Cause all of me loves all of you
Love your curves and all your edges
All your perfect imperfections…

You? You are not perfect. But it is that very lack of perfection that makes you interesting and unique and worthy of being celebrated. And it is that uniqueness that deserves to be captured and documented. Not some AI generated dream version of you, but you. The real you.

So let those other people generate their artificial platonic ideal version of what they think they should be, and let us celebrate the real you. Not to celebrate those imperfections, but to celebrate you: all of you. The bits you love, the bits you might not feel so charitable about, and the bits you don’t have feelings one way or another for.

What we are creating here? It’s real. It’s human. Passionately so. Because if we abdicate our humanity to technology, we’ve lost something important and ineffable.

If you’re interested in getting together and talking about your dream photoshoot—beauty, branding, boudoir or other—simply fill in this form and we can set up a time to talk.