
Cameras that understand: portrait mode and Google Lens - spatten
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/2/5/cameras-that-understand
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lbacaj
As someone who has started messing around with different open TensorFlow
models and NLP algorithms I believe there’s is a lot of exciting things that
AI/ML will unlock, although there is far too much hype right now.

Still despite the hype there are a lot product opportunities and we are only
beginning to scratch the surface thanks to these phones getting better and
generally large scale compute becoming easier to access. However, I disagree
with the author that we can’t go vertical for now and have an app for each
little advancement to take advantage of the piece meal innovations in this
space. I think that’s exactly what we should be doing ala Shazam, as he
mentions. I think product discoverability and growth is a whole other problem
and I don’t think one needs a fully integrated magic AI/ML camera on day 1 to
make an impact and have a great product, old techniques coupled with some of
the newer open source models/papers these big companies are putting out can
work wonders.

As a little example of this, and some self promotion, I recently built a cross
platform app that uses some AI/ML techniques to read any article to you from
the web, forgive me for being a little self promotional but if your interested
you can check it out here: [https://articulu.com](https://articulu.com)

~~~
rezahandzalah
Was curious about what you mean by 'cutting-edge AI'. Is the FAQ page still
under development?

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dkarl
I have to cop to being the philistine who welcomes this, while simultaneously
feeling a little uncomfortable with it. I bought an entry-level DSLR many
years ago, in the naive expectation that if I studied and practiced I would be
able to capture something of the really amazing experiences I had traveling,
camping, and watching my city change and grow. After a lot of frustration,
reading, and talking with more experienced amateur photographers, I realized
that's not what photography is about. Noticing that something looks amazing or
beautiful to the human eye and noticing that there's an amazing or beautiful
photograph to be taken are completely different things, and the best
photograph will be different from what you see with the naked eye. Instead of
naively trying to capture my experiences, I had to learn to "see like a
camera" and see the possible images that could be created via lens choice,
camera settings, and post-processing.

Not only that, it's hard work. After talking to some better photographers
about their photos I realized the experience they were having when they
captured a great photo was the experience of working hard at capturing that
photo. That was the only real experience they ever captured, and they did not
expect there to be any trace of it in the photograph itself. In other words,
my dream of capturing my experiences was a naive fantasy, and there were only
two rewards: loving the process, and occasionally creating a beautiful
photograph.

Sounds a lot like programming, doesn't it! When I bought my DSLR I was
basically like the guy who decides to write an app because it would be cool to
have the app and cool to have written the app, without realizing that the
experience of writing the app far outweighs whatever pleasure might come from
the result. If you don't derive enjoyment and pride from the process, there's
no way that any result will repay the effort.

And I was naive enough to think I could co-opt this hard artistic work to
document the experiences I had as a non-photographer! That would be next level
shit. I would have to be so good at noticing and capitalizing on the
possibility of beautiful photographs that I could pick and choose the ones
that happened to coincidentally reflect my non-photography-mediated
experience. And that means I'd have to attend to the photographic
possibilities _at the same time_ that I was attending to my own experience
_that was somehow separate from photography even thought my photographic skill
was actively engaged_. Impossible, at least at the skill level I felt I could
realistically aspire to.

 _But_ if the photographic expertise and cognition were in a piece of tech
that I could carry with me, the whole idea would make sense again. My vacation
photos would be like my wedding photos: a big stack of expertly shot images
from which I could choose the ones that captured my experience best. Whoah.
That's pretty much what I was looking for in the first place. I just wanted to
share and remember.

Go ahead and embed this in my contact lenses, please! As long as I can adjust
my preferences to get somewhat realistic images. I don't need ML giving me a
chiseled jawline and making all my sunsets hot pink.

~~~
yyyymmddhhmmss
As a photographer for as long as I can remember and traveled the globe to so
many exotic places in wild contexts, I just shed a tear reading your comment
because it brought to realization something I have always had trouble
understanding in my relations with others, and how they understand, or relate,
with what I do.

I encourage you to question your app comparison idea. Programmers rarely come
up with the best apps, and phtotographer who know every technical detail abut
cameras are likewise not usually very good photographers. The product and the
production are separate issues, and the job is in finding a poetry in them.
Poetry is music with words. The music comes first, and the words give it a
shape, like an orchestra. In the case of photography, your eye comes first.
There is no experience; only sight. Only visual sight. and the camera gives it
a shape.

I have never thought of it like you. For me, the photograph always begins in
my mind, already as a photograph. In fact, for me, the camera is only in the
way. The camera offers no benefit or opportunity; only problems to contend
with. The photo exists before the camera comes out of the bag, and the only
reason to use the camera is to share that photo with some one else.

I do not have experiences. There is no “experience”, as you say. There is only
opportunities to create photographs, but until I have the photograph in my
mind, there is nothing to shoot.

I have been in many situations with people in which they got upset with me for
leaving my camera in my bag. Whatever their interest, they would not
understand why I was not shooting photos in said situation. The opposite is
also very common, in which they don’t understand why I would be. Reading your
comment just clarified to me the problem. I can’t believe I never understood
this before.

It’s funny to me how Instagram has popularized my way of experiencing the
world, but in a social context. I spent half my life doing what these
Instagrammers are doing and never felt bad for a second. Travel for the
photos! Why not? I never felt a lick of shame. But I was building and creating
photographs, not a social network. I guess that’s the difference.

~~~
dkarl
I think you have more internalized technical skill than you give yourself
credit for. For me (and other more skilled amateurs that I talked to) there
was a need to consciously think about what images are possible versus not.
Otherwise I would spend all my time thinking about bad or impossible photos.

For example, I'm on a balcony right now, and I might notice a detail of a
cloud behind a corner of a building three blocks away that would make an
interesting composition if I had a telephoto lens with me. That's a waste of
attention (and frustration) if the only camera I have with me is my iPhone. Or
I might see an interesting building and see in my mind the dramatic photo that
I'd get if I walked right up to it with a wide-angle lens, but if I don't have
a wide angle lens with me, it's not going to happen. I might even have in mind
an image that can't be captured at all, because I'm not yet a master of the
equipment. As I got better at using the equipment, I learned to focus on the
images that could be captured with my current skills and what I was carrying,
and let everything else go.

Separate from the question of what's possible is what's good. I might see a
photo, take the photo, and discover later that it has no impact, because I
haven't learned the skill of knowing how the static image will feel when every
other aspect of the experience has been removed. In photography, the golden
hour is an oppressive reality. When I'm out backpacking, I can be thrilled and
overwhelmed by an amazing vista any time of day, but no matter how amazing it
is to see in person, if the light isn't right, the pictures are going to be
boring. A more experienced friend tried to explain this to me, but I wasted
hundreds of shots trying to prove him wrong before I gave up and followed his
example. Well, I follow his example of not bothering shooting landscapes
during the middle of the day, not his example of waking up at 4:30am so he can
hike to the best position and set up to take advantage of the morning light.

 _It’s funny to me how Instagram has popularized my way of experiencing the
world, but in a social context. I spent half my life doing what these
Instagrammers are doing and never felt bad for a second._

That's a comparison that I've thought a lot about, in the context of Facebook.
Communicating a person's experience is a core conceit of Facebook, just like
my initial misconception of photography. Just like photography, when you try
to get good at it, you find that the opportunity to create a post that
communicates a certain experience coincides with actually having that
experience much less often than you would expect. You can be having a great
time and realize there's no way to share it in a way that makes sense to
others. Likewise, you can be in a boring or unpleasant place and happen to
find a perfect backdrop and some props for a selfie that makes it look like
you're having a blast somewhere very chic. So that's what you do.

You would think that with over a billion active users of Facebook, many of
them sincere people who find it hard to present themselves on Facebook, there
would be guidance out there for people hoping to communicate authentically on
social media. But if you look for tips on social media, you instead find
advice for people trying to _succeed_ at social media, either financially or
according to the metrics of the medium. Like photography, if you take it
seriously, you have to give up any naive notions of authenticity. If the
situation is conducive to making a funny and relatable post about feeling a
certain way, that's the post you make, no matter how you actually feel. If
there's no funny and relatable thing to post, then you don't, no matter how
much you long for people to understand how you feel in that moment, just like
if the light isn't right you don't even bother looking through the viewfinder,
no matter how much you're struck by the beauty of the scene in front of you.

Instagram seems to be a mix now of people using it to present themselves as
represented by their lifestyles and people using it to present interesting
photographs, often but not always of things that were designed to have visual
interest in themselves, such as art, design, fashion, and architecture. Of
course there's inherently an element of the former in the latter. I suppose I
must sound very cynical saying that, but it's something I can't stop noticing,
and I don't know how to feel about it.

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mychael
This analysis is late to the game. Software and AI has been eating photography
for some time now.

Do yourself a favor: browse through any photography forum and listen in on the
discussions.

