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Archeologists can't tell for sure whether someone was assigned male or female when alive from bone structure, but they can tell whether someone was an archer. Longbow archer, anyway. The way their arms and shoulders were strongly muscled in a very asymmetrical way is pretty much unmistakable, and they were muscled enough that it's visible in their bones. If someone's seen what archers look like, they can tell whether a stranger they've never seen before can shoot a bow or not.

I always thought "mouth breather" was just another term for "retarded"

It's not! It's a completely unrelated physio fucking oddity! And the people who are? Have anatomically and strikingly different jawbones from a lifetime of breathing through their mouth. Which is related to a host of other health problems, and largely curable with modern surgery.

Back when I worked at the hospital, I had to take MRI training and it was my favorite thing every time. It was only like 10 minutes long and went a little something like this:

Hey. The MRI is basically a really big magnet and by basically I mean it is and we literally never turn it off. It's like really big. Really really big and powerful and The Magnet is always on. We don't turn it off Ever, for any reason. We mean it bro, The Magnet is literally always on. It's crazy strong and will definitely kill you. So don't bring any metal into the MRI room, man. You will fuck up the machine (because The Magnet is always on) and then you will die (again, because The Magnet is always on). Here's some fun questions for you to test your understanding!

1) The ______ is always on.

2) The Magnet is ______ on.

3) How often is The Magnet on?

4) The Magnet is always __.

5) The Magnet is always on. T/F

6) The Magnet is usually on but we know to turn it off for you because you're a very special boy :) T/F

7) My weak fleshy body can survive the wrath of The Magnet. T/F

8) Look at this 500 lbs steel hospital bed, which The Magnet has crumpled into an origami crane. Imagine if that was you.

9) Is The Magnet ever off?

10) Sometimes we turn The Magnet off. T/F

Thank you for taking MRI training. We hope you learned that The Magnet is always on, because it is. It's on Right Now and it will be on every time you come to the MRI. Have fun and remember: The Magnet is always on!

My partner had an MRI back before the buttplug incident.

They asked if I wanted to attend in the room, for comfort. I absolutely said yes, and left my earrings and such in the lockers. Sort of terrified about it, since I've been a metalworker since 16, and I was kind of afraid the big magnet was going to rip parts of me out I hadn't realized were full of metal.

That didn't happen. What did happen was something all the literature and nurses said would absolutely not happen:

It fucks with you. Seriously. Temporarily. But you go in, and get exposed to a fucking megatesla powered magnetic field for thirty minutes, and your brain, a puddle of pudding powered by less electricity than it takes to run a fucking light bulb, doesn't like it.

They say it does nothing. We staggered out of there like blackout drunks, except you still have enough cognitive function to understand that while you don't know where you are, where you're going, or how to get there, you know this is weird. We found a nearby bar, and nursed light beers for a couple hours till we felt we could navigate public transit.

And everything was fine-crooked brain, explains the zero fear in situations that call for it, and lots when it doesn't!- but I wasn't even in the science doughnut, just in the same room.

when i asked whether their autistic classmate's meltdown was dangerous or merely uncomfortable, they said, "i felt like i was in danger!"

yes you should, actually. that's life. upsetting things happen. no one should have to experience any discomfort. but we do. we get stung by bees and sunburns and headaches. we live in bodies in the world.

autistic people are human beings who have the right to exist in society, including during meltdowns. having one class of your entire semester interrupted by a singular meltdown is not anymore of an infringement upon your entitlement to education than having your class interrupted by a fire alarm or cancelled for a snow storm.

one of my peers once experienced a cardiac event 10 minutes into class. it was terrifying. it was desperately upsetting. i was contacted by the school and offered counseling afterward because i happened to be the one who managed the situation until paramedics arrived. no one should have to experience their classmate being hauled off in an ambulance, but it happens. everyone was worried about my classmate first and foremost, and then about me. no one blamed anyone, and certainly when my classmate happily recovered and returned to school, no one thought they should be removed from the program.

I've seen a lot of terrible analysis of this photo.

People are either shoving it through an AI detector, asking Grok, or they are peeping pixels with expertise they don't have.

Like, you can't go drawing straight lines on something with a highly skewed perspective that also has a distorted shape.

Let's ask Mecha-Hitler!

Or upload it to a sketchy AI detection website!

They often have the accuracy of a coin flip. Even lab-grade tools are only 70 to 80% accurate in controlled conditions. And yet people are trusting a free website with an ad for boner pills in the corner to tell them if something is authentic.

I have been doing high level photo manipulation for two decades. I'm as close to an expert as you will get on Tumblr dot com.

So let's properly peep at the pixels and do actual forensic analysis.

First, I think this is mostly a real photo. Probably taken at some other point in time.

And I don't think this is fully AI generated. I actually think it is a traditional composite. I think the hand and newspaper are separate assets that were blended. It's possible the hand was AI-generated and then composited. And I think they may have taken a real photo of someone holding a newspaper and replaced the hand.

The first oddity is the fingers.

Typically when you touch an object it creates a contact shadow. One finger has a contact shadow and the other does not.

It should probably look more like this.

The next sign of a composite is the edge of the finger.

There is a sign of a feathered edge.

This is a lazy compositing technique to help edges blend without making a super precise selection. If you look at all of the other edges in the photo, this is the only one that has a feathered edge. You can see how clean all the other edges are by the top arrow and how fuzzy the finger edge is by the bottom arrow.

If I were cutting out his other hand and taking the time to do it properly, I would clean up the edge to make sure it was consistent with everything else in the photo.

If I were in a hurry, I would just feather the edge and hope no one actually zooms in.

And then there is the edge of the newspaper.

This is called a matte line. The newspaper was most likely against a dark background when they cut it out, and they did not clean up the edge.

Again, it's lazy. Because Photoshop has a tool dedicated to fixing this exact issue.

In my expert opinion, I think they generated an AI hand, took a photo of someone holding a newspaper in similar lighting, and then manually blended them into an existing photo.

But I don't think this was 100% AI-generated. You typically don't see compositing errors in generated images. They probably couldn't get the AI to generate the newspaper without garbled text.

What's curious is that the pixel resolution is just barely bad enough that you cannot tell if the text is authentic. But it's not blurred or distorted. It is just low enough in resolution to give a sense of text without being legible. And I think that made people suspicious due to AI's reputation when text is involved.

But from what I can tell, the print size and letter spacing does seem to match.

So I don't think that is the clue people are making it out to be.

Last thing, image analysis like this is not 100% conclusive. I'm pretty sure there are shenanigans, but anyone who tells you with absolute confidence that an image is fake... is probably bullshitting or ignorant.

The missing contact shadow could be explained by the angle of the light filling it in.

The feathered edge could be motion blur.

The edge of the newspaper could be a sharpening artifact.

Let's look at these supposedly incriminating lines compared to a rough 3D map of the surface.

Just ignore all perspective and geometry.

I'm a member of an advanced photography training community. My mentor creates challenges to help demonstrate certain concepts.

This one required shooting a pop-art-style egg photo to show how specular highlights change with hard and soft light.

This was the example image I was to emulate.

A specular highlight is just a direct reflection of the light source.

With hard light, specular highlights are perceived as brighter. To get hard light, the light source must be smaller (or more distant). So the reflection is smaller, but also more concentrated in intensity.

With soft light, the light source is much larger (or closer). So the intensity of the reflection is spread out over a larger area. So it is perceived as dimmer.

Think about looking directly at a flashlight versus shining it against the wall. The same number of photons are involved, but your experience of them is vastly different.

If you are shooting someone with glasses and the light is reflecting brightly, you can move your light much closer to reduce its apparent intensity.

I worked for 10 minutes at a time over a period of 4 days. I got some fake eggs so I wouldn't have to spend energy cooking. Frustratingly, they arrived with a matte finish. They would not take on a specular highlight at all. So I ordered some automotive clear coat and sprayed the fake eggs on my deck.

You may have noticed my context-less egg art on my deck railing in another post. It was drying in the sun.

The clear coat worked well, so I proceeded to glue the egg to some colored construction paper and tape it to the wall in my kitchen.

I don't have a top-down rig to shoot things from above, so I felt this was a creative and low-energy solution.

A bonus aspect of the challenge was to create a Photoshop composite in which I retain the shadows from the hard light example and the gradient specular highlight on the egg yolk. I can't decide if I like that or the soft light version better.

It feels nice to have accomplished something creative. I am struggling so much with boredom as I recover. And doing anything productive is physically challenging. But I've got my birds and now my egg.

Choose your fighter.

I captured something interesting on this mourning dove.

It has an aluminium band on its leg.

And I initially thought this was some sort of undercover CIA bird monitoring all of my woke activities.

And then I learned this is a science bird doing important science bird things.

Bird banding is a scientific research technique in which individually numbered, lightweight metal bands are attached to the legs of wild birds to enable long-term tracking of individuals. In the United States, the practice has been coordinated since the early 1920s by the USGS Bird Banding Laboratory, working alongside licensed researchers and trained volunteers. When a bird is banded, data such as species, age, sex, location, and date are recorded and linked to that bird's unique band number. The value of banding comes from subsequent encounters: when a banded bird is recaptured, found dead, or simply observed and reported by a member of the public, the sighting is added to the bird's individual record. Over decades, the aggregated data from millions of banded birds has become a foundational resource in ornithology, informing research on migration patterns, longevity, breeding site fidelity, and population trends. Band sightings can be reported by anyone at reportband.gov, making bird banding one of the more accessible forms of citizen science available to the general public.

I keep seeing people use free AI detection websites as evidence in AI witch hunts.

These websites are often scams. They use AI to detect AI. They rarely disclose their methods. They are typically only reliable on obvious material and are no better than a coin flip on content that is more challenging (which is usually when AI detection is needed most).

You'll even note that these websites do not give you a strict yes or no. They give you a percentage of confidence. Yes, it is true that human forensic analysis often has a confidence rating instead of an absolute certainty. But in this case, this gives these websites cover for when they create false positives. They don't tell you their actual success rate of detecting AI, so if you get a bad result, they can just say the tool was only 80% confident.

Even laboratory-grade forensic tools struggle to get above 70-80% accuracy, and staying ahead of AI improvements to maintain that accuracy is a constant struggle.

The best forensic analysis of AI media always has a human component. They use detection software in combination with human experts. There is no reliable, fully automated process. Especially now that people are combining AI with traditional techniques. They might generate an AI image and then use Photoshop to add noise, resize it, change the color and contrast. 5 minutes of work can remove the classic signs of AI that many of these detectors look for.

If you are suspicious of something and you want to use one of these tools as an initial indicator that you should seek out more evidence, I feel that is their only real use case. Like, it should be step one of a multistep process of investigation and it should not be your only evidence. In fact, you should not include it as evidence when making an accusation.

Look for creation dates. Look for provenance. Look at the artist's other work. Look for process videos.

But if you use the result of an AI detector to confidently say something is AI, you could very well hurt an artist using a dubious tool that consistently spits out false positives.

I'm feeling a bit psychic now.

I'm guessing Google has one of the most advanced AI detection tools in the world. But this process cannot be 100% automated or else it will continue to hurt artists.

Google has long refused to hire actual humans to assist their automated processes. If a small YouTube channel needs help, they can rarely reach an actual human being. You need millions of subscribers for the privilege of not dealing with some sort of bot.

My recovery makes me very tired and miserable all the time.

And this causes me to have very thin skin. I don't have access to the emotional regulation to brush off even the mildest of insults.

I also have this OCD thing where negative things, big or small, enter my head and start a feedback loop. This is also exacerbated when tired and miserable.

And the only real way to prevent this is to externalize my thoughts about the negative thing.

Which means if I don't want to be thinking about this comment for the next day, I have to say "your insult about Nolan not wanting to fuck me hurt my feelings."

And it all feels a bit silly for such a minor offense. I wish my brain allowed me to just ignore this and move along.

But there is something cathartic, beyond preventing a feedback loop, about telling people they said something hurtful, even for these mild, inconsequential insults.

In this scene, they are in the middle of the woods under a canopy of trees. They show the sky and there is no moon.

The light has absolutely no motivation.

Motivated lighting is a philosophy where all of the light sources on screen have a logical source. The light from a smartphone on someone's face. A lamp next to the couch. Sterile overhead office lights.

Often filmmakers will still use their own custom light sources, but they will simulate these things to give the impression the light has motivation.

Compare this to when all they really had were bright spotlights and insensitive film. An indoor scene just couldn't have this warm and cozy feel. And the light was just blasted in from everywhere.

Black and white helped a lot. You could still get dramatic effect despite things needing to be overlit. Or you could play with contrast ratios and shadow.

All the stuff you need to see was very bright and exposed well onto film and all the stuff you didn't was very dark.

But there was no graduation in between. It was hard to be subtle.

And when television and movies went color, this black and white contrast advantage was lost.

You can see EVERYTHING. And look at those sharp shadows. Everyone is just being blasted in the face with lights.

This sitcom lighting persisted long past when it was necessary. It became part of the sitcom language.

I think M*A*S*H was one of the first shows to subvert the overlit sitcom aesthetic. They began to play with lighting that had more motivation.

But aesthetic standards are hard to kill. And despite the heavy influence of M*A*S*H, sitcoms persisted all the way into the Friends era.

Her lamp isn't even on. Everything is just lit by God.

I don't think you will see a living room or kitchen scene lit like this very much from here on out.

People are getting used to lighting making more logical sense.

With the advent of LED lighting that can be any size, shape, and brightness, as well as cameras that can interpret very dark images, modern shows can now use bright and dark as narrative tools.

I think Severance does this well, and still keeps everything properly motivated.

But this newfound flexibility has created new problems. If you can film dark things, how dark is too dark? And how do you make sure the audience can see all of the important visual information?

The two worst examples of unmotivated lighting are always space helmets and cars.

It's a conceit. You gotta see the faces so these things are usually forgiven.

But the biggest debate in the realm of unmotivated lighting is night scenes. People have lots of opinions on how best to use light in the dark.

This is because following a motivated lighting philosophy can be especially tricky. Particularly if your setting is a secluded area without any artificial light sources.

Many cinematographers will try to give some sense of moonlight. But moonlight is very hard to replicate, so the effect usually ends up looking pretty fake.

This scene during a blackout in Die Hard 4 looks like they took the brightest light they had, mounted it as high as possible and said, "Fuck it, that's moon-ish."

If the DP is hardcore into motivated lighting, they just make the screen really really dark, like the Long Night battle in Game of Thrones.

The really really dark option bugs a lot of people.

Froggie Tangent about Dark Scenes:

I originally thought people needed to adjust their display settings. But then I realized not everyone watches content in a darkened room like a vampire. But if you find a show or movie is too dark, turning off any room lights will help a lot. Watching it in HDR will also help. And watching it on an OLED will help even more.

Scenes this dark are mostly a fad. DPs are experimenting with the possibilities of new technology. But sometimes they forget not everyone has that technology yet. And they forget some people watch stuff on their phones in a room full of sunlight.

Eventually the fad will fade, we will all adopt better screens, and the darkness will land somehwere between "I can't see shit" and "it would never be that bright in real life."

[End of tangent]

In the olden days, since film wasn't sensitive enough to do scenes in the dark, almost everything needed to have unmotivated lighting just to make sure their film wasn't a grainy mess. And as a culture, we sort of got used to that style. They'd mess with the contrast ratios to give the feeling of night, but if you think about where the light is coming from too hard, it won't make any sense. They took a Broadway theater approach to lighting and so a lot of movies felt like they were on a soundstage.

The 1961 West Side Story is a good example.

They've got a spot light hitting them, but not the building behind them. I guess that could be an overhead street light. But street lights are meant to flood the area like an ever expanding donut of light. A spotlight is like a directly projected cone of light. It is perfectly pointed at the side of their face and not coming from above.

She has some magical purple light coming from... somewhere.

And then they are in an area under a bridge, far away from any lights, but they've got soft fill light with a bright rim coming from the right.

Speilberg's version has much more motivated light.

This one is a bit of a cheat, some very bright source off in the distance. But it feels more plausible to the brain and gives a better sense of darkness. It feels like some kind of industrial lighting. Or a security light at a junkyard.

Here he straight up shows you where the light is coming from. And his preference for anamorphic lenses.

And here he uses bright train lights to create silhouettes. This is clever because it allows everything to be very dark but everyone is still legible in the scene.

I'm torn. Because I study light. And so I am very aware of how shows and movies are lighting things. And unmotivated lighting sticks out in my brain. Like when I watch someone miming playing the guitar. Or using a camera improperly. When you know too much about something, inaccurate onscreen depictions just drive you nuts.

There are some techniques being experimented with to make night scenes more legible while maintaining lighting realism. I think the most promising is the infrared day-for-night process used in Nope.

But maybe it doesn't need to be solved. Maybe DPs should just light the night even if it doesn't always make sense. Maybe general audiences just do not care and I am a big nerd who should be ignored.

Looking back, I think I made it seem like motivated lighting was good and unmotivated lighting was bad. That was not my intention. My issue has more to do with watching something with almost exclusively motivated light and then a scene with unmotivated light breaks that train of immersion.

Or, like with West Side Story, the unmotivated lighting breaks the intended facade. The filmmakers wanted a soundstage to look like a New York City street. But the lighting made it look like a Hollywood soundstage. People had already seen the show on a stage and I think the artistic intent was to avoid that impression. But their lighting limitations made that illusion difficult to pull off.

Some people gave the impression that motivated lighting was less artistic or less emotionally impactful because it is grounded in realism. And lighting should be thought of more like music where we don't question where the music comes from.

I like the spirit of that analogy, but I'm not sure it fits. You choose music to fit the mood and emotion of the scene. And the genre and tempo of the music needs to be motivated by what is happening.

If a movie has a scene where someone is weeping because they learned they have a month to live and Eye of the Tiger starts to play, that could really break immersion.

If your film is grounded in reality, it would make sense that the lighting matches that.

Beyond that... "grounded in reality" and making logical sense does not mean the lighting is 100% realistic. It is still very crafted. In fact, motivated lighting requires a lot more design and artistic thought.

Which is why I would argue that motivated lighting can be more artistic and impactful.

When you don't limit yourself, sometimes that can lead to poor artistic choices. If you give a kid a box with a thousand crayons, you're probably going to get a drawing with a thousand colors.

You get a Zack Snyder movie.

Limitations and constraints on art often help creativity and force you to use your problem solving skills. If you can do lighting however you want, you may be tempted to just film everything on a green screen and use magic CGI lighting in post. Or you may pick an ugly environment and use good lighting as a way to improve the aesthetics. You end up using lighting as a crutch.

But if you constrain yourself to a more motivated lighting philosophy, that can force you to seek out places with beautiful light. To find locations that already look amazing without any additional light. You may be inspired to build amazing sets with the lighting design in mind from the beginning.

Motivated lighting is harder to make look good and requires more effort. And I believe that when art requires more effort, you tend to get a better end result.

Motivated lighting isn't just DPs wanting everything to be realistic for realism's sake. It requires more thought. It makes more sense. And if you can create beautiful, motivated light, it usually looks better.

Severance is widely considered to be a beautiful show. And it uses nearly 100% motivated lighting. They built a lot of the lighting into the actual sets.

That is not to say unmotivated, stylized lighting cannot look cool.

Wes Anderson overlights his films to great effect. He relies on vivid color palettes and strong symmetric composition to inform his aesthetic. He wants you to see all of the details in the frame as clearly as possible.

Sin City uses strong contrast for its aesthetic design.

The lighting is more photographic than filmic, with strong edge lighting. A very common style when photographing athletes with muscles.

And then you have John Wick, which uses a heavy mixture of motivated and unmotivated lighting.

I think this lighting style is called "make it look fucking cool."

I guess my big clarification is that I wasn't advocating for one type of lighting over the other. I love unmotivated lighting. Almost all of my photography is unmotivated lighting. But I wouldn't use studio lighting to do street photography. And Spielberg wouldn't light Saving Private Ryan like John Wick.

It's just a genre of lighting to choose from.

My post was about what to do when motivated lighting interferes with the legibility of the action on screen. I was curious how much this bothers people. And what approach they preferred to solve the problem.

Is it best to abandon the philosophy and lose your stylistic consistency?

Should we explore new solutions like the day-for-night scenes in Nope?

From the poll it seems people are split between "stay in-genre as much as possible and cheat when you have to" and "I just want to see everything."

Personally, I think cheating when you have to is probably where I land. Space helmets bother me, but I do like to see the actor's face.

But I would like to see more cinematographers experiment with new ways to represent darkness on screen like they did with Nope.

I'd like to add something to my conversation and I'm hoping it won't be too controversial.

I think we also need to talk about making demands of artists.

Looking at the comments, I did notice a new concern. Some folks expressed they would like their preferred viewing experience be catered to. They didn't want to make their environment more suitable to watch content with darker scenes.

Not to be confused with accessibility issues. I agree that there are accessibility concerns that are underserved. I tried to address those in another post. (I will reblog it on my main after this.) I think those are best solved with tools that alter the image after the fact. And there are a lot of tools for people with low vision (high contrast modes, zoom features), but not very many options for people who are light sensitive. So if you want to learn more about that issue, check out that post.

This discussion is about wanting filmmakers to make their content more friendly for less-than-ideal viewing environments.

Viewing experience is very wrapped up in artistic intent. The people who make cinematic movies are hoping people will experience them in an actual cinema. That is their artistic priority.

And I think that is where I have a problem with people wanting movies and shows to be completely legible even if they are in a bright or sunny room.

If someone told me to make my photography brighter so they could see it better in their bright kitchen… I would not be okay with that.

I think we sometimes forget that movies are giant artistic collaborations. I know they have been commodified and can sometimes feel like a product more than art. So some people feel like they are getting defective product when they can't see everything clearly. But films are made by hundreds of artists and they are still very much works of art.

And while I do think it is reasonable to make some concessions for accessibility and legibility, I also think people need to respect artistic vision.

If I am Christopher Nolan or Denis Villeneuve and I make an epic cinematic masterpiece using IMAX cameras and all of the most advanced filmmaking techniques to perfectly craft an amazing visual spectacle… and you say you need Dune or Intersteller to look good on your phone as you watch in your backyard at noon… well… no.

If you want to watch something cinematic, I think some effort on your part to find a suitable viewing environment is warranted.

There are definitely shows and movies that got way too caught up in this darkness fad.

The night battle in Game of Thrones was absolutely too dark.

I am in full agreement.

They mastered it on a $20,000 display under ideal conditions and crafted the visuals so they could only be legible in that same environment on a screen that no regular person owns.

I don't think it should be necessary to watch in a pitch black room on a magic TV with perfect calibration.

But if you are watching movies like John Wick or Avatar or Star Wars, I think you owe it to yourself to find a darker space and watch it on your best display.

You will have a better experience and you will be more respectul of the artistic intent.

I create my photography on a highly calibrated 30 inch display in a modertately dark environment. And if I could invite all of you into my room to view my photos, I would. I can't tell you how difficult it is to know people are going to view my highly detailed work on phones. Many are going to have poorly calibrated screens with the wrong colors. Some people might be in the waiting room of a doctor's office with green fluorescent light contaminating their screen.

I love making art for people and I just want them to experience it as I crafted it. But I know that is logistically impossible and most people will view my images under less than ideal circumstances.

And while I'd never demand people change those circumstances just to see one of my photos, I do think it is worth the effort for some content.

I mean, if you are watching Andor on your smartphone next to a giant window, I feel like you are cheating yourself out of a truly unique and beautiful cinematic experience.

So... if you can manage it... meet these artists half way.

Wait until night or turn off a few lights and watch on your biggest screen.

Watch the Mormon wives and Mr. Beast next to the sunny window. They don't care.

Ironically, hard light is bad for recording sexy time.

It will highlight every pore, every vein, every wrinkle on your nutsack.

These outtakes where the flash didn't go off are also AI generated.

I like this spooky dutch angle one.

I was just starting to learn flash and I didn't have all the equipment I needed. Since corgis are quite short, I had to put the lighting on the ground. The off camera flash was on a tipped over lightstand with a shoot-through umbrella to diffuse the light.

But I had no wireless triggers. And the only other way to trigger a flash, is with another flash. So I used the on-camera pop up flash to trigger the main flash.

But I had two issues.

First, I did not want that dinky on camera flash affecting my picture.

Second, triggering a flash with a flash is best done indoors. The flash will bounce all around the room and eventually hit the sensor so the main flash triggers. When you are outdoors, there is no bouncing.

SO... I took a little handheld makeup mirror and angled it toward my main flash. This blocked the dinky pop up flash and sent the beam of light towards the main flash to trigger it.

I was lying on the wet morning grass, holding a camera in one hand, a mirror in the other, trying to aim the mirror exactly toward the main flash, making crazy noises to get Otis's attention, and trying to get the focus point on his face so I didn't get a blurry photo. Also, Otis was much more interested in sniffing things than posing for a photo.

Here is an overhead view that might help explain.

I await all of your comments saying my amazing drawring is clearly AI generated.

Only 30% of the time did the flash actually go off. Aiming the mirror was tricky and I was doing like 8 things at once. I wasn't even sure I got the photo I wanted. But when I came back to the computer there was one that stood out and it is one of my favorites I've ever taken.

It was the best combination of monumental effort, great discomfort, perfect foggy sunrise light, and just pure luck.

Unfortunately, people like me who use advanced sculpting light techniques are getting accused of using AI more and more. Not really sure what to do about it—other than show the 30 awful photos it took to get the good one.

My 80s sunglasses photo and spoon photo get called out the most.

But it's just good old fashioned gradient lighting which has been used in product photography since the days of film.

@ironic-dysgraphia

Most of my photos with artificial light added would be considered "unmotivated lighting." I think that is the term you were looking for.

The short explanation is that motivated lighting always has a logical source. Like the sun or a window or a lamp off to the side.

That doesn't mean there are no lighting shenanigans used.

The overhead office-style fluorescent lights depicted in this scene were actually powerful diffused light bars that were much closer to the actors. They replaced the ceiling in post with more traiditioinal looking lights. So the lighting was still very crafted—but it has a logic and realism that doesn't set off alarm bells in your brain saying, "Where is the light coming from?"

Unmotivated lighting is the opposite. It's crafted, artificial light that doesn't need to make sense. It just has to achieve the aesthetic goal of the artist.

All studio lighting is unmotivated. I just re-edited this old photo of my dad.

There is no room in the world where he could have sat down and had perfectly sculpted light hitting his face. I intentionally directed the light to accentuate his features and capture the best, most idealized version of what he looked like.

Coincidentally I just wrote a post about motivated lighting in films.

Weirdly, I expressed a preference for motivated lighting in movies with a realism-based aesthetic and a lot of people disagreed. They said that the lighting comes from the same place as the music and that you just have to suspend your disbelief.

(Personally I think that is a bad analogy because music is *very* motivated by the emotional vibe. I would say unmotivated lighting in movies comes from the same place as women's apocalypse makeup.)

But I *love* unmotivated lighting in still photography. I love crafting an image and creating it in a fantasy realm where perfect, beautiful, sculpting light can come from anywhere. I want the most idyllic lighting possible.

It's the only way I could make fingernail clippers look beautiful.

And now people are saying unmotivated lighting looks like AI or CGI and isn't authentic. Even though this aesthetic was created before computers were invented and the tools of post-capture manipulation were done in a darkroom.

I'm fairly certain this is because AI does not have a great understanding of motivated lighting. It never thinks about where the light is coming from so it almost always creates images where the lighting comes from a fantasy realm. And now people are heavily associating unmotivated lighting with AI, even if it is a subconscious observation.

I think at this point in time, people are yearning for authenticity. We know so much of our imagery is heavily manipulated for nefarious purposes. Beauty advertising with retouched skin like porcelain dolls and liquified torsos that don't leave space for vital organs. Every fast food ad shows the perfect juicy hamburger because they paid a food stylist $500/hour to perfectly cook and arrange things.

But fast food workers are not food stylists and your burger isn't going to have perfect lettuce and a non-smooshed bun.

(Before you reply with urban legends about food styling, they don't use fake materials. They are required to use the actual ingredients. Those myths came from movie prop masters who needed to maintain the look of food during hours of shooting.)

I think AI just turned our uncomfortable relationship with unrealistic imagery up to 11.

It's a little depressing for me because I love to use light as my artistic medium. I say I am a photographer, but my passion is more focused on lighting.

And I often incorporate my other passion, which is image manipulation. I sometimes add another layer of unreality to my images by artistically editing them.

This is days of work.

I worked very hard for the in-camera image. Dragging a heavy chair and lighting equipment into a field on a hot summer day was not easy for me.

But I also worked very hard on the edit. The RAW file is overexposed, but once I corrected that, the lighting on him and the grass is actually what I captured. I hid a flash in the lampshade and lit him with my big 7 foot umbrella off to the right.

I could have shot this at night, but my area has so much light pollution, I would never have achieved the sky I wanted in my head. So I took the photo knowing I'd replace the sky later.

I like crafting images. I like picturing something in my head and then trying to manifest it in a photo.

I get why people are starting to prefer more natural looking images. I understand why they are currently preferring everything to be captured as it was in the moment. I know why they disparage the amazing work of CG artists and demand that every movie use only practical effects.

When everything is fake, a small dose of reality feels special.

But I see my photography more like a drawing or a painting. Light is my paintbrush and I am just trying to manifest my imagination into an image. I don't claim I don't use artificial light. I never say anything is "straight out of camera." I am very open about my use of Photoshop. If I were able to leave my house and go to more beautiful places, perhaps I would take a more motivated approach.

I mean, I love when the world is just beautiful all on its own and all I have to do is competently pick settings on my camera.

But I enjoy my artistic process and while some of my images may not be realistic, I think my artistry is always authentic.

I don't need every person to like every one of my photos. But when I work hard on a photo and there is clear talent and skill involved, I'm hoping people will still acknowledge that. I hope they will respect the effort and artistry involved.

I didn't enjoy the show Breaking Bad. I disliked all of the characters and the story just depressed me more and more as I watched it. But I still think it is an amazing show created by talented artists. I can acknowledge the monumental artistic achievement even if it wasn't my cup of tea.