B E H I N D T H E S C E N E S

Spheres first came about in an attempt to explore lighting, texture, and structure on past projects. A little bit of paper and an eclipse made from foam was the perfect start for some magic. Ok, ok and a little bit of imagination too.

Not knowing where those projects were leading to at first, I tucked them away for plenty long with not much context to show for. They were long overdue and had been screaming for attention. That’s when by surprise the spheres appeared. As soon as I read that Adobe had released an AI module to implement in their classic Photoshop tool- I had to get my hands on it. Difficult to get any results at first, I was far from giving up realizing that there was some reality to the process. It was the essence of the future in an art form. Image compositing & manipulation at ease.

I hadn’t dared to touch that part of image making before, and to be quite honest… it’s because I’m lazy. I have seen the amount of work that it takes to build a foundation on heavily edited work. I don’t even have my own work established, the process of my photography feels empty at times because figuring out what it means is one of my hardest challenges, nevertheless spending the necessary time to exploit the process. No way Jose, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.” I have a 9 to 5 to worry about. You’ll find me there instead 😁

Adobe had also released the Firefly “text to image” sector alongside the Photoshop AI module, and once again I had to jump in and continue the journey with the spheres. But this time it was a little different because I had to start from scratch with no reference image to begin with, no old work to go along with it- but a mere concept. What I did have were the prompts that I was following in the Photoshop module. For example, I began with words like “texture,” “walls” and “structure”- “concrete.” Behold, the key words were born… “concrete spheres levitate.” AI takes care of the rest, dynamic compositions and lighting that carry through with tangible textures that pop- that’s all AI. With that formula I was able to generate a whole different world. The hard part was over, and the exciting journey began- Where do they come from? Where are they made?

Though I have to say, I have yet to feel comfortable calling them mine, because the way the spheres came about was not necessarily up to me- it was an opportunity. An opportunity to follow the path of what was already there, an old stinky project that is. I quickly learned a rule of thumb from the AI, which was to allow the generative text to do the magic without finding the need to edit much further. You can’t fool what is there or else the results are unsatisfying and too far out. This meant that the original image was in charge, but the exception to being persistent and continuing with it was me. Hence the collaboration.

I hope that you find visual joy in this human-AI collaboration. My favorites are the NOMADS :) They are the explorers of emotions, as close to humanity and life as they can get. Hiding from their origin and finding the need to escape from their nature and reality. I believe that’s a human trait. To look for and obsess over what is not truly there… especially when it does not belong to us.

Enjoy 😊