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Comment by reneberlin | Hacker News Reader

We humans are so excessively dependent on vision input and with entertaining through visuals, too. But more and more all those visuals become meaningless to me and it all just feels like fast-food-junk to me.

As any pre-schooler will be able to produce anything (watch out parents) imaginable in seconds doesn't make it better to me or is of any real value.

Ok, i needed to edit it again to add: maybe this IS the value of it. We can totally forget about phantasizing stories with visuals (movies) because nobody will care anymore.

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they’re junk food-y visuals too. i don’t know how to describe it beyond looking like a cross between fisher-price and a light dose of shrooms.

Yeah I agree, I never understood the appeal of photography, it's so easy, you don't need to paint for hours to produce something original, you just need to buy a camera and click on a button. That's it. And people pay for that, I don't get it.

is it easy? i’m not a photographer but i enjoy taking pictures as a hobby. Your opinion baffles me haha. People always wonder why their iphone can’t shoot photos that look as good as the iphone camera reviews.

https://www.austinmann.com/trek/iphone-16-pro-camera-review-...

Understanding why your camera performs well in certain conditions and how to tweak the camera, is a mini-science all of its own. Also i think the reason photography is appreciated is because of composition.

Knowing where to position yourself, and at what moment, can make photographs turn out magical. Your eyes are processing millions of frames a second, but a photographer often gets just ONE chance to capture some scenes. Some people appreciate the “art” in that. :)

Here’s a thought experiment. Do you consider all wedding photographers to be of equal value? If not, why? Anyone can do it according to you. just click a button. Something to think about…

It's sarcasm

Well to be honest I could have written that without sarcasm.

You don't understand why people pay for cameras?

> Knowing where to choose the right words, and at what moment, can make video gen turn out magical. The AI is processing millions of tokens a second, but a prompter often finds just ONE perfect prompt to capture some scenes. Some people appreciate the “art” in that. :)

I do. It can take hours to make the vision in your head be replicated by the AI. Sure you can spit out generic scenes, but the game changes when the goal is expressing a specific vision with the prompt; choosing the right synonyms, phrasing, etc to make it spit out the closest image.

Do I think I'm an artist for that? Not particularly. I like to think of myself as a prompt engineer, a completely different skill for sure, after all I do think overly logical and practical in life in general so it meshes well with my skills plus my artistic background.

I dislike the term "prompt engineer," particularly if you're not setting up systems on a technical level. And it's still artistic, without necessarily making prompters artists. Because the process is one closer to curation rather than creation, I like to think of prompters as "curators". You're reaching into latent space (a collective visual history), pulling out a collapsed possibility, and deciding if it fits your needs or not.

there’s a reason i put “art” in quotes. I don’t mean the traditional definition, but rather the less commonly used definition from the dictionary:

“a skill at doing a specified thing, typically one acquired through practice.”

I agree that a photographer is not a true artist. It’s not hard to understand why people might appreciate their skill and creativity though?

I honestly thought that, too, until I got my first digital camera and started trying to take photos that I liked as much as other ones I saw. Then I realized how much of a craft it is and I gained a much deeper appreciation.

If this is sarcasm which aims to highlight the problem with parent comment, I wholeheartedly agree.

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