Westmoreland and James M Wood

Beverly and Alvarado

Slow Rose bookended a wild, curated 26-hour show over the weekend at 2220 Arts and Archives and I only saw about seven hours of it and judging from what I did see, I missed out on not being there for the other 19. Nevertheless, a couple photos from driving around before and after.

The Stratford, Eighth and Hoover

My new LA snapshot method is just highlighting intersections while waiting for the light to change.

Wilton and Wilshire

For some time now, I’ve used the Adobe Lightroom mobile app to edit photos I take on my phone, such as this one snapped today on my drive home. However, when I went to edit the photo upon getting home, Adobe had an update to promote to me:

On Lightroom Desktop and Mobile, the headline feature is Generative Expand, which Adobe first rolled out in Photoshop in mid-2023. The tool uses generative AI to extend a photo beyond its original borders, filling transparent areas created by perspective adjustments or making room for new aspect ratios without leaving blank edges

The Generative UI in question

There’s plenty of debate about AI ‘art,’ even though most people who are pro-AI have little to no appreciation for creative process or results—however when it comes to photography, using Generative AI is somehow more offensive. Photography, by its fundamental nature, is documentation. Evidence. An account of reality, interpreted through a lens certainly, but otherwise, nothing that exists in a photograph was not in the scene that was shot.

To use Gen AI in any kind of photographic tool is to go against the very nature of photography. While the people who are shoving AI down our throats at every corner have absolutely no appreciation for the nature of the foundations of how we make things, they also disregard why we make them, or how significant these processes and results are to the relationship humanity has to itself and the world.

People promoting AI exist completely within the idea of technologically-driven bubbles that serve purposes of, well, I don’t even know, coordinating meetings better? Client pitches? Coding apps? A projected version of the world that doesn’t exist but serves the idea of selfish indulgence? Certainly nothing honest, nothing dignified, nothing human.

While there are likely ballistic wars coming over resources such as water, wealth, energy, and political domain, there’s this brewing existential, intangible conflict about the fundamental nature of how we relate to one another, how we share reality, how we celebrate it, and what it actually comprises that is becoming an increasingly depressing landscape.

The Grove

On The Sidewalk

Swap Meet

I live in a pretty rough-and-tumble part of LA now, so on days when I go to see a movie and the theater is in a upper-middle-class outdoor mall, it can be quite a diverse experience of people-watching.

Richter and Key, in a photo that totally makes Key look fatter than she is (I doubt she will mind)

Sometimes I get half-heartedly resentful at these two because owning cats means I can’t just leave my world behind and move to Slovenia on a dime, but then one of them does something funny and my plans to abandon America fade.

I’ve known since I was young that I always wanted cats—and, later on, maybe some goats—as opposed to kids, and I think that’s an okay thing to admit. Children aren’t for everyone (and not that pets are, either—it’s all just preference).