AI is everywhere at the moment. And as a photographer, I find it both fascinating and a little unsettling.
We can now create almost any image we want. Perfect light. Perfect skin. Children smiling at exactly the right moment. We can remove things, add things and even create moments that never actually happened.
But when it comes to family photography, I keep coming back to one question:
Isn’t the fact that it really happened the whole point?
When I photograph a family, I’m not looking for perfection.
I’m looking for the way your child holds your hand. The gap where their baby tooth used to be. The way your toddler refuses to do what we want them to do. The wind messing up everyone’s hair. The look between you and your partner when the kids are being completely chaotic.
Some of those things might not make a photograph ”perfect”.
But they’re real.
And that’s what I want you to remember.
I use technology in my work, of course. Photography has always evolved, and editing is part of what I do. I’ll adjust colours and light and occasionally remove something distracting from the background.
But I don’t want to create a different version of your family.
Because when you look at these photographs in 10 or 20 years, I don’t think you’ll care whether everything looked perfect.
You’ll want to remember how small your son’s hand was in yours. How your daughter laughed. How you looked holding your pregnant belly before you’d even met the little person inside it.
AI can create something beautiful.
But it wasn’t there.
It didn’t experience the wind, the laughter, the toddler meltdown or the hug afterwards.
And for me, that’s why real photography matters more than ever.
Not because it’s perfect.
Because it’s yours.