THE PROCESS

This “Ephemeral Beauty” project celebrates the beauty of what we typically consider old, paying homage to death and dying. As a professional photographer of a couple decades that has enveared to capture the soul essence of those I was fortunate to work with during sessions. 

Because of the way of the future, I one day found myself dabbling in computer software where my imagine working with things I do not know how it’s even possible to work. I have desired to travel the world and photograph essence of those I met, and I have been able to do that in my upcoming late Spring series (hint: Doorways). 

While I love styling and artistic self-expression, I have used digital generation with my own creativity (which is what I call “Mystic Fusion”) to create the scenes, people, clothing and specific lighting. I directed the artificial intelligence using specific instructions, such as camera choice, color theme, styling, attitude (and much more), until I achieved the desired look and feel.

This process was similar to that of a creative director, and I curated the results into very specfic series.

While the AI played a significant role, I consider it a collaboration between my real brain (and creative vision) and an artificial one. It was a profound magical experience. While I am hesitant about the future of how all the artificial intelligence and had a lot of inital resistence as a nature-loving, God-loving AND a lifetime traditional artist and photographer. 

I have spend hours creating beautiful digital montages by “hand” things that which I could never bring through the visions I would get from pure painting (I have explored acrylic, oil, chalk pastels, watercolor, illustration in a variety of mediums) so I found Adobe Photoshop would do it with dozens of complex layers and bringing my art-know how into the digital realm. 

Now we are on a whole new level as creators to create visions into visuals. Frankly, I feel simultaneously excited and terrified about what is possible and how it will shift our future of perception.

However, the point of the project is not how it was created but to move people through storytelling. As a professional photographer, writer, and artist, I understand the implications of using AI in creative fields but simply see it as a tool to tell stories.