Photographers, You're Being Replaced By Software

Mrs. Grundy writes "CGI software, even open-source software like Blender, continues to improve in quality, speed and ease-of-use. Photographer Mark Meyer wonders how long it will be before large segments of the photography industry are replaced by software and become the latest casualty to fall to outsourcing. Some imagery once the domain of photographers has already moved to CGI. Is any segment of the photography market safe? Will we soon accept digital renderings in places where we used to expect photographs?"

Comments

CGI wishes

[crazyjj]

CGI has a LONG way to go before it can replace a good photograph. A well-composed, well-lit photograph can say more than most 3D animations ever could. And a photo is a lot easier and cheaper to produce. Who is going to pay a team of digital artists $100 an hour to create a 3D model of something when you can just tell Jimmy Olsen to go take a picture of it for a pittance?

The software to do 3D may be getting easier and cheaper. But good 3D artists aren't. And a single picture of a wounded, crying girl in Syria will always have a helluva lot more power than any 3D rendering of the deployment of Syrian forces. Photography isn't going all-CGI any more than movies are.

Re:CGI wishes

[rubycodez]

romantic bullshit, CGI replacement of photography and motion pictures is already happening. You think a person with artistic talent in 3rd world who will work for 1/100 the rate of your "pros" has less talent? The ever more powerful cheap computer will level that field fast and soon.

Re:CGI wishes

[idontgno]

Who is going to pay a team of digital artists $100 an hour to create a 3D model of something when you can just tell Jimmy Olsen to go take a picture of it for a pittance?

Someone who wants a "picture" for evidence of an event which never actually happened. If the synthesized image is good enough, it will gain all the credibility that apparently-untouched photographs have. If the viewer can't tell it's 'shopped, it would take remarkable skepticism or some inherent distrust of whomever's presenting the image to disbelieve it.

Re:CGI wishes

[SoupGuru]

Photography as art is going nowhere soon. Same with photojournalism, most likely.

Commercial photography is what's going to be replaced.

Re:CGI wishes

[vlm]

CGI is replacing actual photos in the stock picture business, and in the catalog business. I haven't seen an office catalog in years that uses actual pictures. It's all semi-competent CGI.

I know for a fact, err, trustworthy heresay... that almost all electronic catalog "pictures" are 3-d CAD renderings, sometimes with a bit of photoshop. I'm talking about real EE component catalogs, not best buy consumer catalogs.

From trying to take pictures of things I've built, its an unholy PITA and depth of field and reflections and lighting are agonizing. You can look at the pic of a PCB, lets say a stereotypical switching power supply module, and try to figure out how I could get that depth of field and lighting without reflection issues and suddenly realize, this was done in Solidworks not a camera.

If you want to see how bad "real pictures" of electronic devices/components look, try trashy photos of that stuff on ebay. Some of those guys are obviously not even wiping the human grease off the cellphone camera lens first.

Re:CGI wishes

[squidflakes]

Real pictures look trashy on eBay because real professional photographers aren't taking them. Getting rid of glare and getting the proper depth of field are beginner level, and most people don't even have that. A good light box can be home built for a few dollars. Most of the really good depth of field comes from a large format camera with motions, and while the digital ones are expensive they can be rented for cheap.

Still, you're right in that a lot of component pictures are CGI, but it isn't because competent photographers can't get the shots, its because someone decided it was cheaper.

Re:CGI wishes

[plover]

The balance point comes when the cost of creating and rendering the model to an adequate degree equals the cost of photographing reality.

So for things you're going to reuse in a lot of scenes, such as a car that turns into a giant robot, yeah, the 3D model is way cheaper. For a revolting uncanny-valley version of Tom Hanks on a steam train in a blizzard, 3D is cheaper (but not better.) For a one-off modeling job to create a beautiful person using a product for an advertisement, the effort required to create the model and environment still takes a lot of human work to make it happen. Not that it doesn't take hours of makeup and lighting and staging to photograph the beautiful person and the product, just that the balance is still on the side of the photographer.

Are you imagining a future where an advertising agency has thousands of pre-rendered models they can toss into an environment, slap a couple of boxes of product images onto the virtual tabletop, and click "print"? They do some of that today. But a lot of them have to be careful that they aren't misrepresenting the products. You can show a virtual package under a virtual christmas tree making a virtual kid virtually happy. But you can't show 3D rendered oranges and say "look how perfect our oranges are!" The FTC does have regulatory authority there, and will investigate misleading imagery in advertising.

The thing about 3D modeling (or even 2D art, such as painting), is that a good rendering takes a tremendous amount of talent. I'm not talking about abstract art, or crayon-outlined cartoons, but creating photorealistic imagery takes a trained eye, requiring roughly the same skills as the photographer. A computer can do some of the work, such as making sure the model's foot is touching the floor, but it can't yet give you a sense of balance. That only comes as input from the human operator.

Re:CGI wishes

[njen]

As a CG artist, I can tell you that I have been producing photoreal imagery for almost a decade now. We are already past the point where CG can replace a good photo.

For example, in The Avengers, during the final battle sequence, most of the shots in the city are 100% CG, background buildings and all. Even in many of the "non FX" type films, I can assure you there are lot's of CG going on. Which is why I love it when people tell me that they hate CG films because it's so obvious, then I give them a quick list of films they have seen and give them examples where they have watched CG without even knowing it.

Re:CGI wishes

[Trepidity]

All of painting wasn't obsoleted, but photography did greatly reduce the size of the portrait-painting market, which used to be important and lucrative. Rich people paying to have their portraits painted used to be the main way a lot of artists made a living, but that occupation took a real nose-dive in the early 20th century.

Re:CGI wishes

[ScentCone]

The U.S. should outlaw the use of photoshop by corporations in advertising and reporting.

What about businesses that aren't incorporated? Should a dog groomer who uses a photo of the front of her house as part of her promotional web site be allowed to 'shop out the overhead power lines that distract the eye from the otherwise pleasant, relaxing scene? Yes? Great. How about next year, when her accountant convinces her that it will make more sense for her to incorporate her business. Will she have to put the power lines back in, now that the photograph is being used by an Eeeeevil Corporation in its ads?

How about the four college buddies who get together in an Eeeeeevil Corporation and form a landscaping company? Should they be allowed to show a photograph of one of the yards they maintain, but use Photoshop to clone out the pile of dog crap they didn't notice when they took the photo? So, if you're free-lancing by yourself as a landscaper, that would be fine, but an Eeeeevil Corporation of four college guys would be more evil by doing so? Or is it still OK with you, if it's four guys? How about when they join up with 40 other guys, to do more work? Is cloning out the dog crap or the piece of trash in the photo only evil depending on how many people are communicating when they do it? Really?

I suppose you're also opposed to Eeeeeevil Corporations using wide angle lenses, or special lighting, or make up artists? And photographs used by businesses should only be allowed if the photographer never crouches down to improve the perspective distortion, or to favor the light on a foreground object? Only Eeeeevil Corporations would do something like that. Honest, innocent individual humans would never resort to favoring the subjects they photograph through the use of skills and experience and good tools.

And, of course, it's safe to say that you would completely criminalize the use of watercolor paintings, sketches or any other bit of whimsy that lends itself to artistic license and illustrative techniques meant to emphasize, visually, some particular part of a message. Right? I mean, if people start using artists' renderings in ads, it's probably the end of civilization, right?

Think about this for a minute, OK? Yeeesh.

Re:CGI wishes

[Archangel Michael]

Most people don't trust "Photojournalism" because of how easy it is to "stage" a photo to get the desired "effect" (propaganda)

http://www.zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud/

http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/faking.html

Re:CGI wishes

[cayenne8]

Really? All the data I've seen indicate that average people keep getting smarter.

Obviously you've never worked a job where you were facing the general public.

If you had, well....you start to realize how stupid the general public is, and wonder how they managed to not drown looking up at a rainstorm with their mouths open.

I hate to say it...it really comes off as an elitist attitude, but man...if you're ever worked retail, or food service, you just see things that amaze you....and are not isolated incidents.

After years of working retail and food service decades ago when in school...I came to the frank conclusion that likely 80% of the general population is fucked in the head and stupid.

I sadly, think..it has likely gotten worse in the years since I had to face and deal with them....

Re:CGI wishes

[squidflakes]

F-stop is only part of how you control depth of field. If you're shooting landscapes and you don't have an aperture small enough to get the depth of field you want, the only solution is to do a front tilt. This extends your plane of focus beyond the depth of field and allows you to get your foregrounds and backgrounds in sharp focus, even if the required DOF is huge. This is built in to LF cameras, but you can also get the same effect on medium format and 35mm equivalents by using tilt-shift adapters.

Product and architectural photographers make extensive use of large format cameras and their abilities to either control or distort perspective, focus areas, and DOF. Typically, these options aren't available to cameras that have their lens elements in fixed barrels.

Hell yeah!

[lxs]

I know that when I get married, I won't be hiring a photographer. Instead I'll hire Pixar to make a 15 minute short commemorating the occasion.

Re:Hell yeah!

[scubamage]

I wish in that case it isn't like Up. Most heartbreakingly beautiful 7 minutes ever rendered.

Not outsourcing

[scubamage]

Not to be semantic, but this is not outsourcing. Outsourcing would suggest that they'd hire a photographer overseas to do the job at a lower rate. This is elimination of the job by technological advance (not sure if there is a buzzword synonym or not).

I work in both worlds

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done all sorts of photography professionally - from fine art, documentary, photojournalism, weddings, to commercial (not at the same time). And by professional, I mean, actually getting paid for it and making a living and renting cameras, grip, lights, assistants - the whole gamut. I have since switched to 3D and I tell you it's slower because I have to do everything myself. It's not like animators or modelers are clamoring for still image jobs. I have to model, texture, build the shader, and light the scene everything myself (which isn't hard with my background - but radiosity is another matter). That's at least a 2-3 week additional work time for a project.

Photography won't be replaced by CGI any time soon because the former is faster. I can hire a crew and equipment and finish a shoot in 10-12 hours tops. CG supplements it with set extension or environment/ object replacement, but to create something CG from scratch takes a very long time. I give CG this: it's easier to setup lights whereas in real life you need an electrician or a generator for larger projects, especially if it's on-location outdoors. You also need a lift and an experienced assistant to operate them, and an impeccable sense of where the wires are of course, have safety in mind at all times. With CG, I just click a light node and bam, I can duplicate 2k lights down a tunnel for a car shoot. Obviously, the downside is the render time, particularly when you have to bounce and diffuse it but if you can segment the 6k image to different quadrants per render node, and rent a render farm, it's efficient.

Overall workflow, photography is faster in my experience only because there's people available to hire. Where I'm at, there's not too many freelance CG artists, or artists who knows lighting (because it affects the shader and vice-versa), and almost no photographer/ assistant know how to do CG. I seriously doubt CG will overtake commercially produced still photography (as opposed to wedding, event, documentary, etc).