Okay… So It’s Been a Bloodbath
In terms of military parlance - I was ambushed by the (AI) enemy, and completely routed. It was carnage… the Culloden moment of my career… absolute devastation. About 70% of my work gone in the blink of an eye… and it has taken some time to work through this and start to regroup for a counter attack. I am not entirely there yet, but I am in the regrouping stage if nothing else.
Psychology really doesn’t work on me so well - the positive affirmation that you are supposed to repeat to yourself doesn’t quell my inner voice, I have always been hyper self-critical and I have always compared myself to the best at whatever it is that I am trying to do. This works against me in terms of mental health, but has always pushed me forward. I am good… I am actually very good at what I do, I don’t feel I need to be embarrassed in the company of the top photographers in the region, country or probably globally in terms of what I can achieve. That isn’t to say that I am in the top tier at the moment, but I don’t feel that I should hide away from anyone.
So what now, where are we going?
Well - last week was brutal in terms of earnings. Painfully brutal. I could have done a single shift in a pub and done better brutal. But I had a productive meeting which is hopefully going to start to reignite things and pull me out of this slump (fingers crossed anyway!), I have a meeting on Monday with a potential new client… and I have engaged in discussions to try and do more for another client I have been working with for a while to move them from a basic package to something more full featured.
AI enhanced photography services, such as the one that has caused me all this trouble, are not great. The image quality is less than ideal - the results, whilst better than a couple of years ago, are still on the low side of average. Granted, better than an agent with an iPhone, but they are limited. The processing is overdone making the overall image look fake. So lets break this down a bit as to why.
First off - the agent places the camera on it’s tripod - this is automatically encouraging the “basic” views… at least they are level. The camera takes the photo using a 1” Sony sensor, this is compact camera territory, far from either the APS C size of a crop camera and nothing compared to a full frame sensor such as I tend to use and blown out the stratosphere by medium format (which is where I am hoping to move once things fall back into place). The camera is purely tripod mounted, so there is no scope for lifestyle or creative photography here. The images, once recorded, are then processed by the AI system - which is over processing to both calm the noise inherent in a small sensor camera and then overblown interiors and over recovered windows. This is like really bad agency processing (I am looking at you PB) - there is no nuance to the images produced, and often little bearing to reality.
So - professional HUMAN photography will provide characterful, realistic representations of the property tailored to the home so that the viewer can imagine themselves living in that space. It makes the house feel special, beautiful, light and airy… it makes it desireable. My photography has been included in the Times Property Supplement and glossy magazines… the system named after an African creature with a long neck… that hasn’t. And that, as they say, sums it up entirely.
Moving more up market then is where I see myself. I want to be shooting more property that will grace the pages of the glossy magazines and supplements, but I also want to go further. I want to branch out from purely property listings into something more specialist. So that is my current task - move up the foodchain in listings first whilst simultainously moving towards a more specialist field.
I have got this.
(I hope)
Of course… AI also can’t fly drones (and certainly not legally). Neither can most estate agents, particularly not legally - and that is something that is sure to start biting soon with the new laws that have come in, once the grace period is over there are going to be quite a lot of people being pulled up over illegal operation. Even the ones who do use drones often just lack the fine motor skills to get smooth footage and create overlong pieces that just look terrible, rather than selling the property I think they bore people to the point of switching off!
Here is one that I did for this plot of land.
