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Workers, S. Pedro Alcantara, Lisboa (2015)

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Friendly neighbor photograph man

Would you please strike a pose? And an apology for photographs in a world on the rise of AI

2 min readDec 10, 2023

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It’s hard and sometimes a mistake to ask someone to take their pictures because you eventually get a pose from them, which may seem intrusive.

Most of the time, when I go out as a street photographer, I don’t have the courage or at least ain’t enough at ease to approach people on the street to ask to take their pictures or frame them in some scenery. So this was an uncommon day back in 2015 because, in the same film roll, I saw I approached a couple of strangers and someone else I knew but wasn’t at ease asking for his portrait. This was the third picture of strangers that day. This was right after lunch, and they were resuming their work. The expression on my subjects' faces shows how fluid the talk asking for their picture went. They were interested in me approaching them and totally went for it.

I especially like the composition. Lighting was tricky as the two guys in the back were under a summer top sun while the scene in the front was in the shadow. This kind of photograph makes me go back to basic, and I was thinking of reasons why AI-generated images are not photographs:

Not a photograph as it is not possible to specify aperture, speed, ISO, and white balance (for digital) or developing parameters for film support.

Not a photograph as there is no timestamp, no captured moment.

Not an art because the human spirit creates art.

Miguel Feuggin
Miguel Feuggin

Written by Miguel Feuggin

Art Photographer, Essayist on Photography, Science and History.

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