Branding Photography, AI and the Courage to be Seen

You’re Brand isn’t AI. You are.

When you outsource your branding photos to AI, what are you really outsourcing?

What would you say you gained from creating with AI? What kind of meaning and knowledge have you gained? Does it make you feel uncomfortable knowing that your photos were computer generated?

I’ve received pushback from people saying that no one wants branding photographs anymore.
Could it be that they simply don’t want a certain type of branding photo anymore? Or are they getting mixed up about what branding photos are actually meant to do?

When you create photos with AI, you are doing the exact opposite of what branding photos are meant to do. They’re meant to show the essence of your personality, communicate through your own eyes, your gestures, and build a connection with the person standing behind the camera. They are also meant to communicate your purpose to an audience. You are at once creating with the photographer and with the people with whom you want to share your message.

Through human connection your natural authority builds. Because through shared experience, whether through laughter, compassion, frustration or discomfort, your fortitude and resilience strengthen.

You build the ability to share who you are and what you stand for.

Creating with AI robs you of the opportunity to feel uncomfortable at the start of a photoshoot, to feel the feelings that are evoked by having a person really see you, to build the muscle of being seen as you are.

The pendulum has swung so rapidly and abruptly that it has hit us in the head. It’s made us forget that vulnerability and trusting another human creates the greatest gift that can bring us together: to slow down in the beauty of a moment. A still (photo) can at once conjure an idea about another that tells a story through an expression, with the help of light and perspective, backdrops.

Yes, you could say that this is also a fiction.

We are creating a story that can deceive.

We are also creating an experience that can change you (the subject and the viewer), make you more comfortable or uncomfortable, feel more beautiful or ugly, feel more self-love or self-loathing, become grounded in purpose or create an awareness that a detour from the current path is required. 

Dare I say you could find another part of yourself.

When you create with a human partner you develop an unfolding narrative that is your life and where you want to go, where you’re headed whether as a business owner, an entrepreneur; yes as a whole person.

Yes, AI is novel, yes it is astoundingly smart and astoundingly stupid. It saves us time (I wonder), but it also takes the joy out of doing things that connect us to ourselves, that help us learn about ourselves so that we can make a greater contribution to a world that seems to have lost its way.

If AI can create your image, what are you giving up?
And if the courage is optional, what does that cost you?