AI and the Chemistry of Sight: Film Stock in Digital Darkrooms
If artificial intelligence heralds "the death of the expert," it is only transforming the practice, not eliminating the practitioner. Much as photography evolved from daguerreotype to digital without erasing the photographer's eye, AI recalibrates expertise without diminishing its essence. What emerges is not absence but alchemy—a transmutation of skill from technical exclusivity to perceptual acuity.
Film Stock and Silicon: The Medium as Collaborator
Different AI models operate remarkably like various film stocks once did—each with distinct sensitivities and signatures. Consider how Tri-X captured street life with gritty contrast while Velvia saturated landscapes with dreamlike color. Similarly, today's language models each carry their own "grain structure"—some optimized for analytical precision like Kodachrome's sharpness, others for creative exploration like the dreamy halation of Cinestill.
This evolution unfolds as a journey in three exposures:
1. The Box Camera Stage
(Learning the properties of the medium)
Just as photographers once learned which film responded best to available light—ASA 400 for overcast days, ASA 25 for sunlit precision—we now learn which AI models bring different qualities to our work. The novice photographer discovers that pushing film creates certain artifacts; the AI practitioner learns that certain prompting approaches yield characteristic patterns. Both are learning not just technique but temperament—the personality of their medium.
2. The Zone System Phase
(Calibrating for intentional outcomes)
Ansel Adams revolutionized photography not by inventing new film but by developing a system to precisely control how existing materials rendered light and shadow. Similarly, prompt engineering represents not merely instruction but calibration—adjusting inputs to achieve predictable, repeatable results while allowing for creative interpretation. This is where craft emerges: in the deliberate manipulation of known properties for expressive ends.
3. The Transparent Viewfinder
(When medium serves vision)
Eventually, Cartier-Bresson's Leica became an extension of his eye—not conscious equipment but unconscious enabler. So too does advanced prompt engineering become invisible, as attention shifts from the mechanics of instruction to the qualities of the resulting image. At this stage, photographers don't think about film stock; they think about light. AI practitioners don't obsess over prompt structure; they focus on the emerging insight.
Push Processing the Mind
The radiologist augmented by AI is akin to the photographer who switched from manual to autofocus—not diminished but differently directed. Her talent shifts from pattern recognition (now handled by silicon) to contextual interpretation and empathetic communication, just as the photographer's skill evolved from calculating exposure to anticipating moments. Both still require a trained eye, but for different aspects of the frame.
When Kodak introduced film speed standards, it didn't eliminate expertise—it standardized technical foundations so photographers could elevate their attention to composition and meaning. The finest street photographers didn't abandon their craft when TTL metering arrived; they redirected their concentration from calculating exposure to capturing ephemeral human expression.
Developer and Fixer: The Chemistry of Collaboration
In the end, AI models, like film stocks, are passive until activated by human intent. The same intelligence that once discerned which developer would bring out shadow detail in Plus-X now determines which parameters will surface nuanced understanding from a language model. As Minor White noted, "The photographer projects himself into everything he sees, identifying himself with everything to know it and feel it better."
The master photographer selects Portra for its subtle skin tones, Delta for its extended dynamic range, or Acros for its reciprocity characteristics—not mechanically but intuitively, having internalized each film's signature. Similarly, the AI practitioner comes to know instinctively which model best serves a particular purpose, which prompting approach matches specific needs.
What emerges is not the obsolescence of the expert but a new form of mastery—one that recognizes technology as collaborator rather than competitor, medium rather than message. Just as digital photography didn't eliminate visual artistry but redirected it from chemistry to computation, AI doesn't replace human discernment but refocuses it from information processing to meaning-making.
In both the silver halide grain and the silicon circuit, what matters ultimately is the human sensibility guiding them—the vision that transforms mechanical process into revelation, rendering the mundane momentarily transcendent. This, after all, has always been photography's promise: not to capture reality, but to help us see it anew.