Comment by lurking_swe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lurking_swe | Hacker News Reader

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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…

> 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?

It's sarcasm

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

You don't understand why people pay for cameras?

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