AI KILLED TRADITIONAL PRODUCTION. GOOD.

Photographers and creatives are losing their minds about AI. They should be.

I've seen this before in the early 2000s, when film went digital. Initially, photographers resisted, calling it soulless. Within a decade, they were either obsolete or adapted. Then Then film, like vinyl, was consigned to hobbyist stores for hipsters.

Now it's happening again. AI is killing traditional production workflows. And honestly? It deserves to die.

The Workflow That Should Have Died Sooner

I've lived that world. I’ve stood in the French Alps at 4AM waiting for perfect light to shoot a car for Ford. I've wrangled people on winter beach sets for Summer Westfield shoots. Tried to coax the best out of badly behaved animals.

The work was premium. The process? Painful.

Weeks of pre-production. Location scouting. Casting. Permits. Props. Shotlists. Shoot day. Capture 500 images. Select 10. Retoucher spends a week perfecting them.

Typical size of an on-set team for shoot day (after weeks of lead up)

Timeline: 3-6 weeks. Output: One campaign.

Brands are sitting on budgets meant for 4 campaigns, facing demand for 40. Let’s be honest, traditional production just can't scale to that.

What Killed It

Maybe AI. Mostly economics.

A traditional $50K shoot produces 10 final images over 3-6 weeks of planning. Hybrid production produces 40 variations in 2 weeks. Same quality. Four times the output. A third of the time. It makes sense. So what’s the hold up?

The Resistance

I once knew a designer who refused to use AI, saying he 'disagreed with it morally'. He likened his reasoning to his musical preferences. He liked real music. Acoustic jazz over electronic music. Real instruments. Real craft.

Then he'd drive his car home. Built by robots. Assembled by machines that replaced thousands of factory jobs.

But AI? That crossed a line.

When you scratch the surface, you realise reluctance isn't about morals. It's fear. If a tool can do in 10 minutes what took 10 hours, what's their value?

What Replaces It

Not pure AI. That's generic slop.

Not pure traditional. Too slow, too expensive.

Hybrid production: Real brand assets combined with AI scenarios, guided by 20 years of art direction.

The Reality

If a 30-year-old workflow is your only competitive advantage, that's not craft. That's inertia.

It’s time to adapt or become obsolete. Again.