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The Difference Maker Revolution Podcast
Will AI Kill the Photography Industry? (Part 1 – The Threat)
00:27:41
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- [00:00]
A
The question we asked last week was, will AI kill the photography industry? Let's go wild.
- [00:06]
B
Photographer who thinks it's all about the quality of their photography, their awards, their qualifications are dead in the water.
- [00:14]
C
How is the skin tone and the pores in the skin? And oh my God, it was just insane.
- [00:20]
D
I am a client of photography. When that ChatGPT thing happened over the holidays where you could put yourself into a sparkly jumpsuit with candy canes all over you, I was all over it. I've never looked so good. Just saved me hours and years at the gym.
- [00:34]
A
If I really urgently needed a headshot right now, I could take a selfie, upload it and get higher quality probably than what I could get by going to a studio in minutes. AI will kill transactional photography, but what about difference maker experiences? Hey, difference makers. Welcome back to the difference maker Revolution podcast. This week we're joined by Janine in Tampa, Florida, Steve in Melbourne, Australia, Ronan in Clane, Ireland and myself Jono in Clane, Ireland. And last week we left you on a cliffhanger. Hopefully you've applied to join the inner circle. If you haven't, click that button, will you? And the question we asked last week was, will AI kill the photography industry? So who wants to go first, team? That's my question. Will AI kill the photography industry? Let's open it up. Let's go wild.
- [01:21]
D
Let's go wild.
- [01:23]
B
For many of them, Jonathan at will, in my opinion, for many, what we call photographers, photographer, which effectively is a photographer who thinks it's all about the quality of their photography, their awards, their qualifications. Yeah, you're dead in the water.
- [01:42]
A
I've actually had a great idea, right team, we should do this on one of the inner circle coaching calls. So yesterday on our, we meet daily as a mentor team, right? Sometimes it's for half an hour, sometimes it's for way too long. But either way we meet daily and you know, yesterday I showed the team this site, site I come across that, you know, it was talking about creating AI generated content. So like user generated content in terms of like videos, user generated, like photographs, images, the lot, right. And the level of detail, like I don't know what your guys reaction was. Steve and Janine and Ronan, it was incredible. But when I saw it it was like what's the actual.
- [02:23]
D
All the normal giveaways were not there. The shadows were right, the lighting was right, the detail was right. The shadows on the droplets of water on the skin was right. Like it just the level of detail and accuracy was unbelievable.
- [02:37]
C
How was the skin tone and the pores in the skin and oh my God, it was just insane. It was insane.
- [02:44]
A
Like there's a reason Disney are pooping their pants and sending cease and desist letters to sea dance, etc. It's because they're afraid, like this stuff can make films can create photographs better than any human professional.
- [02:57]
C
So we're dead in the water, Is that what you're saying, Jono? We're dead in the water?
- [03:01]
A
No, what I'm saying is that if you place the value in photography in the actual skill of creating a photographic photo that's amazing in the eyes of photographers, then you're pretty much f ed. But no, I mean, you guys can talk to it. But like that those markets that rely on photography to sell, where you're selling photography, good luck. I know Ron loves talking about the high school seniors, so. Yeah, well, I was, I was just
- [03:27]
B
going to come in on the high school seniors because it's something I've seen for, you know, we went first into the U.S. i'm trying to remember the exact year now. And I didn't know where high school senior photography was, you know, when I went in first, you know. Cause it was something that we didn't have in Ireland and in Europe. Right.
- [03:44]
C
Well, I thought it was old people with, with their trolley things, walking around. Zimmer frame. Zimmer frames, that's it.
- [03:54]
B
But when I saw it, like I said, oh, they're pretty cool, you know, because there was a footballer or a baseball player, you know, and the stadium behind them and they sliding in, you know, or pretending to slide in. Like these were not live shots. They were sort of created, right, to capture the high school senior, the smoke machine and smoke coming out around them and all that, you know, and it was all about the photography and what could be done and what could be created as a photo or an image or whatever.
- [04:22]
A
Right?
- [04:22]
B
There was. That was what it was about. And so many high school seniors, even then, if I take a high school senior girl, it was about, you know, the different outfits and the different locations, the different backgrounds and, you know, and it was all built around that. And those who were looked at by other high school senior photographers as being the best were the ones who could create the best photographic image. If that's your value proposition, you're dead lucky.
- [04:50]
A
Difference makers know that that's never a good value proposition. But we'll get to that on next week's episode. But just talk to me, Janine, about this idea of, oh, well, you know, clients you know, they. They're looking for this amazing art that I've created. You know, it's so important. Clients will never do that now.
- [05:10]
D
Well, here, look. I am a client of photography, right? I did it. Oh, my gosh. When that chat GPT thing happened over the holidays where you could put yourself into a sparkly jumpsuit with canes all over you, I was all over it. I've never looked so good. I was like, oh, I could look like this in a sparkly white jumpsuit. This just saved me hours and years at the gym. I can go eat a pizza and still look good in that sparkly white jumpsuit. Fantastic. I was all over, and you guys were teasing me, like, oh, my gosh, Gene, how did you do that? And I'm like, why? It was fun. I had, like, 150 people like my photo on Facebook, you know, And I'm like, oh, look at this. This is fun. So if you don't think your clients are all about doing stuff like that, you're wrong. I mean, most photographers I knew did it. And I know it's silly, and I know it's fun and it's not real, but who the heck cares? We haven't been real in our photos for. Since Photoshop. I mean, when you look at, like, headshot photographers, oh, my gosh, when we were doing headshots for the past decade, I think people are like, can you take out all of my wrinkles? Get rid of my forehead lines? Get rid of the bags under my eyes? Get rid of this? Can you get rid of this? I mean, we're already making it not real to begin with. So this is just another version of that. So, yeah, I mean, the finished photo, you could just upload 30 photos to AI right now and ask it to produce something for you. And it can be done, right? So it's not the finished photo. It never was the finished photo. It was never the finished photo. And that's where people's mistake lies. They thought it was the finished photo.
- [06:49]
A
You triggered something in my mind there, right? So technically, you mentioned Photoshop, but technically, I mean, the minute you introduced lighting and posing, like, that's not real either. Technically manipulating light and posing to make someone look certain way.
- [07:05]
D
Ansel Adams was destroyed in the beginning. Like, artists went after him in the beginning because he manipulated negatives in the dark room. He was the first to do that, you know? And they like, this isn't real. You're. You're modifying landscapes. How can you do this? You're modifying your mod, like, so this has always happened. When I first got into photography back also with film, we would send our images to the lab and the lab would do the retouch. They painted, they remember Steve, they did retouching on the actual photo before they sent it to you. So, you know, it's, it's, I mean this is, it's just a new way of doing it much faster and really cool because I was in a white pearly jumpsuit and looked fantastic. So, you know, it's, it's not the finished photo, but the feeling is, is there?
- [08:00]
B
So, Janine, I want to just say something about marketing because we're talking about is the photography industry dead? Right? There's a couple of things that are being done marketing wise right now, which means you are dead if you continue to do them. So what is real? What is real is that AI, when it's checking you out, is looking for consistency. So we all know the photographers who've been taught to say, do mini sessions and then turn that mini session into a higher paying client, right? AI will see through that like that because it'll say there's a disconnect here between what you're saying you're doing over here and what you're actually doing here. The same thing applies to, oh, you know, book 20 headshots in a day and then turn four of them into a branding session. Dead in the water. Dead in the water. Because people are not going to be booking you anymore for doing the headshot in the first place, let alone that AI will see. There's a disconnect between here and here. So it's a really important point that I think people are probably not aware of that not only is the technical piece changing massively and not only is if it's all about the technical outcome that you're not needed anymore as a photographer for that, but there's also the marketing piece that everything has to be consistent and lined up because AI can diagnose. Okay, let me just explain something differently to you about, just to tell you how powerful AI is. So AI today, right, you can give it a 2,000 page report, right? You can feed that to the AI, it can read it, understand it and take action on it in less than three minutes. So if you think you can fool AI with your marketing and have this over here, right, and say something's different over here and it doesn't see it, you're full of nobody but yourself.
- [09:59]
A
Ron, you were a bit generous there because like with that report, that report is an example of someone who owns A tech company who does writes code for companies and rewrites code for companies. So that AI agent that he spun up not only read a 2000 page document, it read a 2000 page document on his whole philosophy and way of coding, and now writes, tests and ships production code in the real world without him checking it. And it learns how to do it in three minutes. So it's even more deeper. Don't do it. An injustice.
- [10:37]
B
It didn't want to frighten people completely, Jonathan, but I believe you've just done that.
- [10:41]
D
I think it requires a little frightening in order to wake up because I feel I've had so many conversations with my photographer friends and. All right, maybe I'll hand it to you. If you're 70 and in the photography industry and you just want to last another year, fine, whatever. You know, you can photograph your existing clients and just retire into the sunset. But if you're not ignoring this and just saying, nope, I'm going to run my studio like I did in 2016 and all's going to be good, it'll be fine. Because people love me. People love my photography. I have photographed their kids for a decade. I'll continue to photograph them for the next decade. It's. They need to be scared. Ronan and Jonathan and you guys are really good at scaring because that if they're not scared into reality, they're going to go out of business. And I don't want my friends to go out of business.
- [11:36]
A
Here's, here's an interesting thing, Janine. Here's where it won't kill the photography industry and it won't kill the photography industry for photographers whose sole purpose and main purpose in life is to win as many awards as possible and win as many print competitions as possible. So when universal basic income comes, you'll have plenty of time and, you know, you'll be paid your money to enter and spend all those times entering awards and having other photographers judge you and give you your feedback and merits and everything. So I won't kill the photography industry from that respect, but from running a photography business based on transactional photography. 100% dust. So I agree.
- [12:16]
B
And Janine, I know that you remember we have this brand positioning piece that we used to say, I am the of the photography industry. Right. And yours was, I am the Disney of the photography industry. And I know you look at what Disney does really closely to see what you can learn from them because they do what they do so well. But you were telling us the other day about a big change in Disney and the reason why they've chosen a particular leader within the organization to be the new leader. Leader.
- [12:54]
D
Yeah. So you know, Disney is replacing their CEO, right? They're going through that process right now and everyone thought it was going to be the guy who was in charge of streaming and they've made a shift and it is not. It is going to be the man who's in charge of the parks, the cruise lines and all of the in person experiences because Disney sees the shift. We're not going to fully go into this shift until the next podcast episode. We're going to continue scaring you guys right now. But yes, always looking to Disney. These companies will survive. They will figure out their way. I fully believe Disney will figure out what to do. But this is one of the things that they've looked at. They know where people are willing to spend the money. They know what can't be duplicated yet. And, and this is where they're putting their focus. This is what they're gonna bank on is, is that's the future. Right. And that's a lesson that we're going to talk about in the next episode that I think we need to, to really look at as photographers, as business owners, as people in people to people, businesses, the lessons of those bigger companies, especially ones like Disney.
- [14:06]
A
Janine. I think it's important because it's tough, right? This isn't easy, this shift, as Ronan said, I can't remember what is this episode of the last episode are both about, you know, the speed of change and like how mind blowing it is. But just to give you an example, and it's not the photography industry per se here, but it's the creative industry. And I see a lot of people saying things like protesting, oh, don't use AI. You can't use AI. You're not going to stop AI. Get out of yourselves. You do not have that power. No amount of lobbying in Washington D.C. is going to stop AI. Good luck. Get off that boat. You've no power. Sorry. Right. But here's something I did that would probably, you know, piss off some creatives. So recently I was playing around with my, my best friend Claude, who is at one of the LLMs. It's an AI and in 10 minutes it created a full logo for me with the vector based files. Anyone who works in Illustrator will know what a vector based file is or works in print with PNG files with a full brand guideline and palette, colors and everything that would have taken a graphic designer and, you know, marketing specialists weeks to produce it did it in like 15 minutes. They're done on my computer. And I'm sure people say, oh, you're devaluing the, you know, creativity of graphic designers. Get real. I'm not going to pay a graphic designer thousands and wait for weeks for them to come back with something I don't like when I can have what I do like in 15 minutes. Same thing with photography.
- [15:51]
C
Well, I think that's the other thing, Jono. Everybody wants things yesterday done yesterday. And you know, I did that the old fashioned way where you pay a creative designer and you pay thousands and thousands. I think we had six meetings and it took months. Right. And yes, they walk you through and they ask you all the questions and all of that. And I don't know how much like were you guided through colloid as it was creating all of this?
- [16:20]
A
You can be with the right prompting, but I was just testing it with basic stuff. So. Yeah, but you can get it to do that for sure.
- [16:28]
B
You were seeing what it was technically capable of. But if you give it the prompt and say, I want you to guide me one question at a time, like a brand consultant would, so a guy fully under, so you fully understand my values and what my business stands for, it will do that and then produce examples of designs and you've that experience, Steve. I've had that experience experience too, because in a previous life our clients were design agencies and ad agencies. And literally what Jonathan produced, I saw seen produce in the past, right? And it would take them a week or two just to create the logo in four different variations.
- [17:08]
C
But at the same time, when you, you go and approach this and you, you sign up and you, you, you know, you put your money down for this, it is something you needed yesterday. And so that urgency, even back then we had that urgency. And now we've been so conditioned that everything's so instant that there's even more need to have things done quickly. And so you're right, Jono, you know, to hire somebody for. People are going to go for convenience and that speed to get things done because it's another bottleneck in your business that you need solved.
- [17:48]
A
Just think about this from a human perspective, right? A normal human being when it comes to things like headshot photography. If I need a headshot before AI, if I need a headshot, I have to book an appointment, I have to go to a studio.
- [18:02]
C
You have to find somebody first before you can book an appointment.
- [18:05]
A
Find someone first, go to a location, get the photos taken, spend an hour or whatever doing poses. I Don't really want to do, wait, then for weeks, get my hair done. If you're a lady like Janine, your
- [18:18]
D
makeup done, get your hair done, wait
- [18:22]
A
for weeks for the photographer, then to retouch and edit them and send them over to me, right, and pay a small fortune. And I haven't done this yet, but if I really urgently needed a headshot right now, I could take a selfie, upload it and get higher quality probably than what I could get by going to a studio in minutes. And I can get it now. And the important thing is, like, I'm not like trying to diss photographers or anything, but like, you got to be realistic. Like just jumping on this ship of trying to convince and persuade people that they need to use you is like trying to convince and persuade people that they should still use a horse to travel up and down the country when they have a car available, is my opinion.
- [19:07]
B
That's the illusion of safety, Jonathan. And you see it everywhere, this illusion of safety, that this is just a trend and it'll all change, right? And the interesting thing, from our own industry, we've seen it. You're probably not old enough to know this, Jonathan, but we saw it with Kodak. They thought digital was just going to be a trend. Where is Kodak today?
- [19:29]
D
Motorola is not. They were safe. You run it. Motorola thought they were safe.
- [19:33]
B
We did.
- [19:34]
C
We did resist moving from film, didn't we? Because we thought, you know, and it was a. A moral thing, a pride thing, an ego thing in the end. But now, you know, all those photos you were describing before on, you know, talking about senior photography, realistically, none of that was real, was it? It's all about the Photoshop. It's all about adding all that digital drama to things. What's the difference?
- [20:01]
A
Even just catalogy. And I think this is a good segment into, like, hard questions. The studio owners must start to ask themselves this khodology of saying that I'm a premium luxury brand. You know, when people, people say that, they drive me mad because they say it. Because they think people buy your work or book you because you're a premium luxury brand. No, they don't. You don't understand brand psychology and how premium luxury brands work. If you think that, like, come on, people don't buy a Gucci handbag because it has Gucci written on it. They're not buying your premium luxury photography because you took the photo and retouched and edited it. Come on, get a marketing degree. Like, seriously, even better, ask AI to teach you marketing like, anyway, don't start me on that train.
- [20:49]
D
It is a good segment, Jonathan. So we should ask photographers the tough question. What is this hard question?
- [20:56]
A
So why do clients hire you, Janine?
- [20:58]
D
This is the tough question. And I think photographers really need to think about this because I think you'll hear so many of them answer, oh, they hire me because of the product, because I can produce an amazing photograph for them. I can make them look amazing, I can make their kids look amazing. I can do the perfect newborn pose that they see on Pinterest. I can, I can create the smoke machines, I can incorporate all the sports that the child is into and make it look amazing. And it's all, I, I, I like what I can do. Right. But this is the tough question. And they photographers really need to sit and think about, why does someone actually hire you? We've touched on some of it in this podcast so far. Like Steve talked about, you know, it could be is, are they hiring you for convenience? They hiring you for the product that you do that you create? Is it the experience that you're creating? And I, it's interesting to me, in so many of the different forums and boards that we look at, people just find experience differently. Is it the physical experience? Is it the emotional experience? Right? Is it the status? I mean, are we Annie Leibowitz? Do we all think we're Annie Leibovitz? And people are hiring us to get Annie Leibovitz to photograph their photo? You know, are you telling a story with your photographs? And so I think, like, if, if you don't know, if a photographer doesn't know the answer to this question, as Jonathan said, they're dead in the water.
- [22:27]
B
It's a really important one, Janine, because, you know, you've talked about convenience, right? AI is more convenient. You, you lose if it's about the product and it's about just the digitals, because that's what my client asks for. AI produces files.
- [22:41]
A
You lose.
- [22:42]
B
If it's about experience, no. AI can't yet replicate a true human guided interaction between you and those you love or you yourself. AI can't do that yet.
- [22:59]
A
Yes being the keyword.
- [23:00]
C
You said yes.
- [23:04]
A
I think team as well. Like, you know, over the last few podcasts, we may have been like, you know, spicy. Some have called it, some have called it, you know, hard ass. Some have called it, you know, putting. You may feel like, you may feel insulted or you may feel, you know, disappointed. You shouldn't. And here's why. Because the reason why we're saying this is, in my opinion, for five years we've tried the Molly coddling route, model, cuddle route, whatever. It's too old for me, that phrase of, you know, saying, oh, great job guys, well done, you know, keep going, you're doing amazing, maybe just change that. The problem is you're not fecking listening to us, right? We care about you, that's why we're doing this. If we didn't care about you, we wouldn't do this. And personally I'm sick and tired of seeing you, you guys self sabotaging yourselves. So that's why we're being harsh. We're trying a new approach because you need to fecking hear it.
- [24:04]
D
How is F E C K is the Irish word? So it's not really a curse word.
- [24:10]
A
That's not a curse word at all, Janine. It's an Irish word.
- [24:12]
D
Genuinely not really a curse word. F E, C, K. Don't take it
- [24:16]
A
the wrong way, like we're doing this for your benefit, doing it for our own health. If we're doing it for our own health, oh God, we'd all be dead by now.
- [24:24]
B
But I think this relates back to what we were saying a bit earlier too, Jonathan, in that, you know, we, we felt we could be softer and model cuddle people because people had time to understand, adapt and change. That's gone.
- [24:44]
D
It's gone.
- [24:46]
B
The time to do that is gone. So we've no choice. It's not about you didn't listen to us or it's taken too long. It's the fact, the strategic fact is that you don't have time anymore. It's as simple as that. You don't have time, you have a
- [25:03]
D
choice, you know, and it's interesting because let's take this even, you know, looking in my world of children's photography, you think about it, you know, people would have call and ask, what kind of backgrounds do you have? And, and do you have all these backgrounds? And you know, what do you have? What do you have? What do you have? And companies were made based upon backgrounds. AI can do all that. You don't need to have that anymore. You know that like people who banked on I have every background. What'd you say? It wouldn't be real?
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A
That wouldn't be real.
- [25:37]
D
There's so many things like if you, and here's the honest truth, right? Like if, if your photography was essentially a commodity, which is what Jonathan was even talking about with the logo creation, right? If what you were doing was a commodity, it's irrelevant Now, I mean, I like, I almost like when if someone, a potential client calls and says, do you offer digital only collection? I mean, I half heartedly want to jokingly and be like, you don't need to hire me for that. Just upload your photos into AI and get your own digital files. Like you don't need me for that. You know what I mean? And I haven't said that yet, but it might be coming out of my mouth shortly. I don't know if that would be a Steve approved discovery call response, but
- [26:18]
C
I don't think so.
- [26:21]
D
But in all honesty, if you're a photographer and your only product is digital, you're done. It's a commodity, they can do it. They could do a better backgrounds than you have in your studio. If that little ChatGPT exercise that everybody did in the fall says anything, that's what it says. If I was only selling in my studio the finished result of someone on a Christmas background, I'd be done. I mean, they don't need me.
- [26:47]
C
You could have saved yourself that trip to the post office to pick up those ducks.
- [26:51]
D
I could have saved myself the trip to the post office to pick up my ducks. If it was only about the finished photo of a child with a duck. I would be done because I could go into AI and say, here's James, can you put a duck in his hand please?
- [27:03]
C
There'd be no heat lamps.
- [27:05]
D
Yeah, there'd be no heat. There'd be no duck poop to pick up. No, no, I'd be done.
- [27:09]
A
So two things you need to do for your own future is one, you need to click on the link below and apply to join the inner circle where we will help you navigate these fast moving times and achieve your version of success. And the second thing is that AI will kill transactional photography. But what about difference maker experiences? Join us next week to find out. Bye for now.
- [27:37]
D
Bye everyone.
- [27:38]
A
Bye everyone.