Greetings,

This marks 1,526 days of working on the Museletter. When I put each week’s issue together, the work created all week is a bit like a period at the end of a sentence. Sometimes it is an exclamation mark, and sometimes a question mark. (grin). In any case, it is a work of love.

This is a bit of a particular week, with three shoots planned over the next three days. Some long-planned and some last-minute. All will be fun and hopefully artistic. I hope to have a special idea to include in each one. A goal of sorts is to make each shoot have a centerpiece. We’ll see how that goes. That takes planning, and most of what I do is rarely planned.

This week’s video is a quick shoot with Elley. I’m sure our friendship will be evident, as well as her insane abilities to pose and make shit up as she goes. Notice she picks up a window frame and starts posing with it? As I mentioned, much of my art happens without a course.

Three of the images with Elley in the green top, and the Steampunk image, have AI-generated backgrounds to my specifications for that particular shot. I’m not a fan of AI taking away from art. Once upon a time, you had to see a photographer to get a picture. Today we all walk around with mind-blowing cameras in our pockets. Hell, we can do videos rivaling any found making the big-screen movies we watch. That left new photographers to grasp Photoshop to add a style to images, but now there are filters people can add to blow that option out of the water.

I will never move to do full photo shoots by explaining to the computer what I want to see. A couple of photographers I know and respect have done just that, and frankly, the work they are putting out is beautiful and, in one case, right along the lines of what outstanding work he used to shoot with a camera. I think that will be very rare. Then again, the camera didn’t replace painted portraits, graphite, or sculptures.

I use a camera for my art because I can’t make a stick figure recognizable with a pencil. But I can play with lights and a camera and use my imagination to create something I love. (and is recognizable…usually)

Until AI selects the name Skynet and we are all doomed, I’ll play.

Stay open-minded and curious, my friends!

Dave

And if you’d like to give me any feedback on these Museletters, feel free! I love to hear from you all! - Contact form