Full of critics in here. I’m not sure what service these “analysts” think they’re providing but it is so annoying to read these pompous critiques: dude I’m happy I’ll choose one as my wallpaper and dream that I’m special because I found this special photo from a special artist that decided to give his work away for us to enjoy? Wtf are these people rambling about! Enjoy the gift, or not, but please stfu… people aren’t looking for a review to a freebie.
So weird how so many people are complaining here. These are some stunning photos. Thanks for making them available.
Not sure what the upload limit on Unsplash is, but that’s where I share my photos so that they can be downloaded for free. Maybe try uploading them there?
Except this isn't crap and it's taken real effort to get to most of these locations. Holding up an iphone and getting a photo made by Apple just doesn't compared.
Stock photography doesn't pay well at all, so I can understand why some want to give it away for free.
I have a 7k USD gear, shot thousands of pictures, and put the 50 best ones on Shutterstock, I had 5 sales, and 3 were for one picture. I made a total of $0.89 USD and am still well bellow the withdrawal threshold.
It was not even worth the time uploading and annotating the 3 pictures that eventually sold.
Myself and a few others played around with early on. And I suspect to the degree some photos sell even modestly, they were mostly shot for stock and often have people in them who have signed model release forms.
What a beautiful set of photos, thank you. To those that complain, hahaha i doubt any of you would be able to produce something similar.
EDIT: WOW 4600 photos..
Nature shots, sky shots, landscapes, airshows, many different countries.. 20 years of work.. amazing
All kinds of photo styles, and it is obvious that this Photographer has a talent for composing, framing and finding a motive..
There are so many amazing photos here. Unfortunately the high-res versions are currently inaccessible. I guess I don't understand the choice to provide low-res on a per-photo basis, but high-res all or nothing.
From the website: "Here are some of the photos from the archive (but in low resolution. For the full resolution download the archive)."
From the archive download link (a single large zip):
"Sorry, you can't view or download this file at this time.
Too many users have viewed or downloaded this file recently. Please try accessing the file again later. If the file you are trying to access is particularly large or is shared with many people, it may take up to 24 hours to be able to view or download the file. If you still can't access a file after 24 hours, contact your domain administrator."
An artist intending something to look a certain way is the poorest defense of this way being good. To reduce it to absurdity, an artist can also say “I intend it to be bad”, and it still won’t make it good. Ultimately, judgement of a piece of art belongs fully to the audience.
> Due to exposure to psychedelics I now have a vision of the world where reality is just another dream in an infinity of possible dreams that make up an infinity of possible worlds and ways to exist in this weird little universe of ours.
Cheers mate! I am happy to read things like this from people who are living a wonderful life and talks about it openly.
If OP made their photo collection available for free while high on psychedelics, I suspect most courts would say any statements/agreements made while high have no legal weight...
That in turn makes it slightly risky to use these photos.
They appear to be free to view, like many photos on the internet. Did I miss some other statement about a waiver of copyright here? because I don't see one.
I've noticed that there's a dearth of good, high-resolution wallpapers.
I have 3x cropped 4K monitors side by side (11520 x 1600 resolution). Less-than-1:1-resolution photos stick out like a sore thumb, and I haven't been able to find much with this amount of pixels on the web. To get this many pixels, I resorted to stitching my own panoramas.
The 100MP Fuji GFX's have just enough horizontal resolution, but there aren't many full-res shots online from those cameras. I should probably just rent one at some point...
Sorry, you can't view or download this file at this time.
Too many users have viewed or downloaded this file recently. Please try accessing the file again later. If the file you are trying to access is particularly large or is shared with many people, it may take up to 24 hours to be able to view or download the file. If you still can't access a file after 24 hours, contact your domain administrator.
As a photographer, just a few years ago this would seem like a crazy move to me. But these days with AI image generators producing gorgeous images, I see a lot less value in landscape photography every day.
I've downloaded the full 14.9 GB archive. It contains a lot of fluff shots and extra shots. Probably most if not all of his best work is presented on his website already.
As for why he decided to do this, my take on it is, based on a link shared in this thread, that he has decided to go all-in on AI photo generation and is maybe hoping his photos get used by other AI photo enthusiasts to train their models.
no shade intended towards the artist, but there are thousands of flickr users who allow full size downloads and permissive license, why is this artists decision notable?
there's no mention of making these public domain, so they are only free as in beer, fwiw
>but there are thousands of flickr users who allow full size downloads and permissive license, why is this artists decision notable?
Probably that pros don't do that as much. It's another thing to give pictures for free when you're not selling them anyway, and another to give them for free when making them is your job.
Think of it like your cousin Joe vs Ed Sheeran doing a free concern at the local park.
Guess so. But whether it's CDs or live shows, the key point is that what this guy is doing is more "news" (or HNews) worthy because he is a pro with a good portfolio, as opposed to some amateurs giving their stuff for free.
I didn't use "albums away for free" because, seriously, hipsters and boomers aside, who buys albums these days?
People like this news, they’re good photos, and that’s all it takes for enough people to upvote. I for one welcome a post that’s beautiful and different. Definitely going to use these as backgrounds.
I can't find much information about him but from his LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/manea-aurel-7775421/) he is not only a talented photographer in Romania but also technical artist for video games as well.
If anyone downloaded already and could setup a torrent that would be nice. These photos are gorgeous, but not sure if he is know for one (or more) in particular.
Thousands of users, and only 0.1% creates normal images, the rest are copying other photographer's style. Silky waterfalls and other repulsing trash like showing homeless people without their consent. Oh, and full moons. Because half moons are not trendy anymore.
Since you are cool with judgement, I'll just point out that photographers have been putting neutral density filters on cameras since long before you were born.
People used to make the same arguments about introducing artificial light. So overdone!
And? The problem is. Someone started shooting running water like this, then the amateurs copied it, and now you can't see a damn waterfall that doesn't have this overused, repulsive look. It's ugly. Just like people can't make a Moon shot that is not a full moon, whyy?
You should launch a site where people can list the things that they've done so that everyone can see a list of things that are Done, knowing that if they try it, they will be embarrassing themselves.
Trying to replicate something that already exists, without adding anything unique to the mix? You mean copying? Then showing it as yours? Does that create any value? Where does that even lead?
I mean if you recreate it in order to learn the technique, that's good.
It's like in the bbc show where they were sawing logs in front of an orangutan and the orangutan copied the action, but didn't really know why.
To be clear I don't have any problems with this photographer's work, just remarked that each and every waterfall looks the same on Flickr.
>there's no mention of making these public domain, so they are only free as in beer, fwiw
the owner would need to grant a license to be free as in beer. These are fully copyrighted, that website is a catalog, and the copyright holder is offering prints for sale. technically, there is no right to download them beyond the browser and browser cache.
I'm only assuming here but Flickr must be the source of some of the larger image training sets because they do let you filter by license. Most common license is attribution, non-commercial, share-alike (BY-NC-SA), permissive to remixing but yeah doesn't explicitly mention "digest into neural soup"
I think "allow our future AI overlords to learn from your work without royalty or credit" is a hard checkbox to sell for a lot of creators. At one point I moved all my cloud photos* from Google to Adobe Lightroom because the latter did offer a checkbox to the effect of "don't use my photos to train neural nets" (or maybe it was a more innocuous 'improve our future products', I can't recall, but it was explicit enough to make me switch)
I am sure that many people will love these photographs. And there is no doubt that the photographer is talented. But there has been such a trend in the last several years to photographers that are highly saturated and heavily processed that, to me, they are no longer interesting.
I agree about heavily processed photographs - but what actually sets apart "professional" (or let's call them "serious") landscape photographs from those people like you and I take is the photographer's willingness to plan ahead and wait for juuust the right moment for a photograph. Let's take this image of Lake Bled in Slovenia: http://aurelm.com/wp-content/uploads/Gallery-Bled-lake-sunri... - ok, maybe it's a bit too saturated, but what makes it look impressive is the dramatic lighting, which can only be captured at sunrise (if you're lucky and the sky isn't completely overcast, of course). If he wanted a perfect photo, he could have also photoshopped out the crane behind the castle in the background, but he didn't...
No, lots of the lighting flare on the right is most likely edited in like most photos on the internet these days. It's a nice shot but people keep pushing the limit and trying to out compete each other... the best way? Add interesting "lighting".
Some great photos, but I have to agree, many of these just feel "too photoshopped" to me, too much saturation, too much HDR processing, not natural, almost cartoonish.
What does the full res photo give you without any open/free license? At most a desktop wallpaper. It would be more interesting to see the raw or unprocessed images under a free license.
Unfortunately Instagram has become the primary vector for photographers to get their work out there, and the small size basically demands flashy over the top editing to get anyone's attention.
And iPhone default camera settings lean toward the same direction. All my iPhone shots look like they are targeting Insta (which makes a kind of sense).
One fun activity (for me, anyway) is to take the same landscape scene with my phone, my m43rds (crop sensor camera with very opinionated JPEGs and neutral RAW processing), and my full frame mirrorless camera (just RAW here as the JPEGs are more neutral).
And then compare them (the iPhone is definitely more opinionated that even the m43rds JPEGS) and try to post process the full frame RAWs (which even without HDR have 14 stops of range) to match the iPhone.
It's often surprisingly hard (iPhones auto do HDR, for instance) and points out how much the photos I get on my phone don't reflect what I'm seeing (or reflect it in a post-straight-photography way).
Google Pixel is also overdoing the postprocessing, some people are altered so much that they are almost hard to recognize. Luckily, you can save the rates directly
These pictures are works of art, it's taken countless hours to create such a huge portfolio of pictures. What you are saying is, these are not to my taste, and fair enough. But putting them in same basket as other "highly saturated and heavily processed" is simply not fair.
No, it's not "these are not to my tastes", it's saying "I love pottery, but pottery made entirely or on the most by machines is not nice." in a world where the latter is getting more and more common and the people seem to be blinded to source.
Not only that, but apart from a wallpaper or something to hang on an Ikea style apartment wall - I'm not sure what else I can use this content for. They're actually pretty, i actually like though?
I would love if the photographer would make his RAW photos available. I love seeing different edits of a good photo. /r/EditMyRaw is a great subreddit for this.
Yeah this photos and most shared on the internet these days are all heavily edited to the point where you can't tell if they've been run through several apps or even had new elements like birds, lighting or even clone stamped all impurities out.
It's quite depressing, this is coming from another photographer. Real photography is circling the drain.
As a photog who leans heavily on contrast and saturation, images without this touch just feel amateurish and incomplete. My edits are what separate me from the smartphone-wielding, blinded-by-computational-photography masses, and I like for my images to pop in a way that AI and automatic color fixes can't achieve.
Very good looking pictures, well curated, nifty post processed, much better than any I have produced. And available in native resolution. What else could anyone want. Great job!
I feel bad saying so because the photographer is clearly talented and has put a lot of effort into producing these images, but… this is exactly the style of photography (people-free otherworldly landscapes) that is most amenable to AI synthesis. I would not be at all surprised to hear that they had come out of Midjourney or DALL-E. That should be read as praise of the AI models, not a slight against the photographer.
Those models are going to squeeze “real” photographers into an ever smaller niche, which is ironic given that the original photography is the ground-truth training material that enabled the models in the first place, and the generosity of this particular photographer is probably furthering this vicious cycle.
I started doing photography as a means of staying sane during COVID lockdowns. It has been a great way to get me outside and moving (mostly in nature) when there was not much else to do.
Having said all that, I think the real value in photography is the doing itself. Yes, the profit generated by each photograph will go down to zero, but I think the real value for people will come from the experience of going out and making a photo.
My most memorable photograph is waking up at sunset in the middle of the mountains only to see the sun shine on a giant piece of rock. The photos I took are good, but you can just google it and you will see thousands of them.
The photos I took are just a reminder of me running out of the tent to stare at the beauty of nature. AI will never give me that. Not because it can’t generate a better photo, but because it can’t generate the pain on my back from a heavy backpack.
Photography thought me how to look for those odd moments at sunset/sunrise, weird cloud formations that make the rest of the experience that much more enjoyable.
Photography hobbyists aren't likely to stick with the activity unless they like the doing (or the fact that they can point to something they made, even if they're annoyed by the process) -- I agree. So, naturally I agree that AI can't replace that.
But people who are making photographs for others to consume (not you; not me) are what the grandparent comment are referring to. AI is definitely going to squeeze them very hard, unless they're generating something AI doesn't.
One of the main sources of income for professional photographers is wedding photography. Ceremony, party, some shots at some park, ... It pays well, but taking really good pictures is also incredibly hard. You need to be at the right place at the right time, correct setting, lens etc all ready, and then capture exactly the things that matter. Her look over her shoulder towards the groom. Some guest laughing at grandmas joke. A bridesmaid shedding a tear.
It's not about the scenery. Obviously you can fake all of that. It's about the interactions between the people, and those split-second moments representing the feelings of the people involved. Good look getting that with AI.
Yes, and particularly in the case of commercial landscape work. People photography, however, might actually be helped out more than hurt. Imagine all the post-processing you could do to "clean up" wedding photographs, for instance. Still need a photographer that is good at capturing the "decisive moment"(1) - so that skill might be more centered going forward...
(1) E.g. "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept" might become "Sharpness is no longer even a bourgeois concept" : )
From a certain formalist perspective, yes, a matrix of pixels is a matrix of pixels. I can't help but think eventually we will come to value verifiable human provenance for photography. Human artworks already exude a sort of "aura" in the Benjaminian sense. Or - perhaps 'prompt artistry' will be enough to convey this ineffable human emotional spirit.
