Seriously. AI is not the main character.
AI needs no introduction. It’s wildly powerful. It ramped quickly and flooded every corner of our lives, and yes, a few big tech companies behaved like hooligans along the way, which naturally created fear, dread, and the sense that something precious was slipping away. But here’s the hard truth: AI has already been adopted. Every single photographer we’ve spoken to in the past six months, and that’s hundreds of them, is using it. Not as a philosophical debate. Not as an existential threat. Just as a tool to run their business. To build mood boards. To finish images. To keep up. AI is reshaping photography at a pace we haven’t seen since the transition from film to digital. And this is uncomfortable. Profoundly uncomfortable. But if there’s anything we’ve learned from Patrick Fore, we need to “sit with the discomfort.” So now the real question is: What future are we building toward? Back to the Metal When everything gets louder, the best photographers do something counterintuitive: They go quieter. They slow down. They find community. They create with more intention and honesty. Because the world doesn’t need less photography. It needs more. More authorship, more …
