A.I. photography and traditional landscape nature and fine art photographs
I’m interested in images of flowers somewhat past their prime. Roses beginning to wilt are especially appealing. There is more poetry in the history of roses whose petals are starting to curl and begin turning brown. The life-force that is in glorious display in roses at their peak is starting to leave, as it must eventually from all living things.
It took about 16 iterations and adjustments to get this image from Midjourney. The Siberian Elm is now considered an invasive tree. It was once considered a replacement for the American Elm, which had been nearly wiped out by Dutch Elm Disease. But no more. However, the bark of the Siberian Elm is believed to have a wealth of good medicinal uses.
Often, sunflower images show the flower rendered with perfect symmetry and perfect shape. Rather, this image shows the sunflower petals a little bit ragged and not exactly symmetrical. One can imagine this sunflower as having been blown around a bit in a wind. I think this sunflower corresponds a bit more to “real life.” I imagine this sunflower as embodying more than the usually pictured “perfect” bloom – It’s not perfect; it exhibits some “wear and tear” yet retains the essence of the ideal sunflower.
Dahlias, in my opinion, are among the most glamorous of flowers. They always appear to me with an elegance that is both stately and compelling. This image (created with A.I.) also continues my efforts to replicate the style of Mapplethorpe’s flowers.
The Midjourney A.I. allows an image to be interpreted (actually, created) in the style of something or someone. This led me to an experiment that I hoped would produce interesting results. I had the A.I. produce a series of images styled according to well-known artists modern and contemporary artists. Every image started with the simple prompt, Photo in the style of ____ of a country scene,Fujifilm GFX 100 fullscreen camera,40mm f16–ar 4:3–chaos 50 –s 50. (Midjourney produces 4 images for each prompt. The chaos parameter tells the A.I. the degree to which I want them to be different.) None of the images were reprocessed in any way. The process is entirely in the hands of the A.I. This includes visualizing a country scene, and applying what the A.I. knows of the artist specified.
A collection of country scenes, rendered with the help of the A.I., two Western scenes, two Autumn scenes, four Winter scenes, and three Spring and Summer scenes, including a hill country town.
Midjourney is often thought to be among the top two or three A.I. art and design programs. (I think DALL-E 2. is the only close competitor.) Midjourney is particularly helpful in areas of digital design including architecture, interior design, product design, garden planning, and the like. For me, the best use of Midjourney (or other similar A.I.) is for what I call “Playing with Intention“.
Playing with intention is not exclusive to other instrumental uses of Midjourney. One can, for instance, engage in intentional playing in the course of specific design projects such as in architecture. “Playing with Intention” is first “Playing.” We give free rein to the imagination and see what we get. But we develop a prompt thoughtfully. And we pay attention to the results, considering any ideas it stimulates, or further image exploring that it suggests.
Several writers have made comments addressing this “playing with intention.”
The final three images are Midjourney images inspired by Picasso’s Woman Looking in Mirror. Before that are two images from Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Before that, we just let Midjourney go wild with simple geometric prompts.
A great big collection of beautiful flower images!
