ICYMI: Chevy is feeding his original photos to an AI to create an NFT series (and documenting it all ​here​). Follow on ​Twitter​ for first looks.

Alright, so…day one of creating!

I logged in to Discord → signed up for the paid version of Midjourney (MJ, if you’re nasty) → started experimenting…

First, I asked MJ to imagine a bunch of different things unrelated to the ​NFT​ photo series - you know, to feel out its limits.

These were things like:

1. ‘A tech website landing page’

2. ‘A space age computer ad from the 90's’

3. ‘A late 80's early 90's style apple computer ad, where a young man and his father are looking at an Apple computer in their home office’

Ok, damn! Pretty cool…

What’s cooler is you can give MJ a hyperlink to an image and it’ll use it as a reference.

Or if you don’t want it to reference a specific photo, you can tell it to reference a general style/combination of styles.

This is when I had my first ‘Oh. Sh*t. This is going to change things’ moment…

See, my thinking is: humans don’t have the capacity for true originality (everything is informed by outside influences in some way).

We can, however, create the illusion of true originality by taking in a range of influences, mixing them with our own personal tastes, and making a bunch of happy mistakes along the way.

(Personal taste + influences = 'new' art style).

Once I realized I could feed my own original photos to Midjourney, tell it which photographic styles I was trying to blend when I took it, and it’d spit out a photo that combines them all…

That is when I had my ‘Oh. Sh*t’ moment - because I realized:

All of that time, work, learning, trial and error that exists between ‘idea’ and ‘final creation’?

AI hyper contracts it. From days/months/years - to seconds.

(It’s as exciting as it is terrifying).

But why tell you, when I can show you…

First, here’s a photo I took on a visit to LA, back in 2019 (it'll play a role later on):

Now, it's worth noting that there are two photographers I really love and aspire to blend the styles of: Larry Sultan and Nguan.

Problem is: I ain’t that good of a photographer (I'll admit it).

But then again - nor should I be - photography is a side hobby that I've slipped in and out of over the years.

Larry and Nguan have dedicated entire lifetimes to their craft.

So I got to thinking…

What happens if I give MJ my photo, along with the prompt ‘Photo by Larry Sultan and Nguan’? I can tell you now: it’s nothing worth sharing.

See, Nguan is like Cher - he goes by a single name.

And while Nguan appears to be a relatively uncommon surname (​Ancestry.com​ only has 3000 instances of ‘Nguan’ showing up on census records), Midjourney struggles to align ‘Nguan’ with a photographic style.

So I jerry rigged it.

Nguan’s style is distinct in its use of pastel colors - the next best thing I could think of was the work of Nguan's friend, Petra Collins.

Not a perfect match, but hey - I'm here to experiment!

So here’s what I got when I sent MJ my photo + the prompt ‘Photo by Larry Sultan and Petra Collins.’

I know art is subjective - but god damn! That is so much cooler than anything I've ever taken (and it took all of 30 seconds to make!).

This discovery took me down one hell of a conceptual/ethical/moral rabbit hole…

A rabbit hole we’ll explore together, tomorrow in Part 3.

Follow on ​Twitter​ (Instagram coming soon) for first looks on each NFT release.

Want a chance to win a 1/1 NFT at release? ​Enter here​.

P.S. Want to try making your own AI images?

Sign up to our newsletter and invite a friend using the referral code in the welcome email.

You’ll then be invited to our Discord, where you’ll get free access to Midjourney (the AI tool we’re using for this project).