THE IMAGE IS NOT THE TECHNOLOGY

The idea comes before the tool

 

I see a lot of discussion around AI, CGI, photography, new models and new production tools.

All of it is interesting. Some of it is changing the way we work quite dramatically.

But sometimes I think we are talking too much about how an image is made and not enough about why it should exist.

A photograph is still a photograph.

A CGI image is still an image.

And an AI-generated image can be beautiful, strange, unexpected, even impossible.

But the technology doesn't make the idea.

It only gives us another way to produce it.

Choosing the right language

For many years, photography was the natural starting point for almost everything we did.

Then CGI became part of our workflow. Not as a replacement for photography, but as another way of constructing an image when reality was not enough.

Today AI has entered the process as well.

This doesn't mean that every image needs AI.

Quite the opposite.

Sometimes the best solution is still to photograph something.

Sometimes CGI makes more sense.

Sometimes AI opens a door that would be very difficult, expensive or simply impossible to reach in another way.

And sometimes the strongest result comes from combining all of them.

The important thing is that the technique follows the idea.

Not the other way around.

Why does this image need to exist?

Before starting a production, I always find myself asking a few simple questions.

What are we trying to communicate?

What should the image make us feel?

What is the most interesting way to show it?

And, perhaps most importantly:

Why this image?

These questions sound obvious, but they are not always asked.

We have reached a moment where producing an image is easier than ever.

That makes the choice of the image itself much more important.

The tool is never the point

I don't think photography, CGI and AI should be treated as separate creative worlds.

They are different languages.

Different instruments.

Different ways of reaching an image.

What matters is the final visual idea.

The image should work before anyone asks how it was made.

Because if the first thing you notice is the technology, something is probably missing.

For me, creative direction starts exactly there.

Not with the tool.

With the image.