INTENT, SKILLS AND ALGOS: Yesterday, I was taking photos at the launch of Impact in Southeast Asia (i-SEA) Fellowship Programme at my school, while demonstrating to a new friend how a photographer combines human intention, photographic skill and “algorithm literacy”. This has been my approach since my photojournalism days in 1998-2003 and it has influenced how I use and teach Gen AI today.
1️⃣ This scene has our guest of honour, Senior Parliamentary Secretary Eric Chua chatting with the participants of the programme. From where I was standing, the studio lights and the shadows already provided strong visual elements to frame the people. However, because the people were backlit, it was hard to see their faces which were in the shadows.
2️⃣ I took a few shots with my phone (Oppo Find N5) at 1x focal length to see how the camera would read the scene and adjust the exposure. Thankfully, the algorithm provided a good tonal balance and the faces were lit up by some bounced lighting.
3️⃣ Then, I switched to the wider 0.6x camera to show more of the studio background but this time, the people’s faces became dark. This implied that the algorithm was adjusting the exposure for the wider scene. I bumped up the exposure and took some more shots, but the faces were still dark.
4️⃣ So I switched back to the 1x camera and then I had to wait for the right moment to capture the ideal expressions. As photojournalists know, we never interrupt a scene, but wait for things to play out, and hope that our fingers are fast enough. It gets more difficult at my age when my eyes are no longer as sharp.
It took 15 iterations before I got the “nab shot” (as my photojourn seniors used to say) and I could put down my phone. Photography trained my patience with iteration and there’s a lot of thinking that goes on as I study the scene and work with the algorithm.
This is how I teach people to wield Gen AI. To get effective output, you have to keep using it, be patient, decide what is the ideal outcome, and then harness the algorithm’s strengths.
If you don’t use Gen AI but spend all your time reading about what other people say, then you will neither learn how the technology works nor upskill yourself.
Go take some photos and write some prompts today 🙂