Taking the bus to the roller rink.
During my tween years I spent my weekends at Lynnwood Bowl and Skate. At the age of 13, I became a member of the Peeps, the junior division of the Tilted Thunder Rail Birds. From 13 to 18, I competed in banked track Derby, even traveling to California for two consecutive years to participate in national competitions. Roller skating played a significant role in my teenage years, and i relied on the bus to get to the rink.
Skating with such amazing, strong women made me feel incredibly supported and empowered. Even to this day, I have a deep love for skating. My knees unfortunately don’t share the same enthusiasm.
When I first started roller derby, I was lucky to have Meesa, my adorable Toy Australian Shepherd, come into my life. She has always brought me so much love and happiness. I was also really into art, especially anime. So, I want the final image to capture this phase. To make this happen I downloaded a somewhat sketchy app (mojo AI) to bring my vision to life.
Prompt #1 The Bus.
I used basic words like (Taking the bus, Public transportation) to generate my first image. AI generated this nice bus image but it wasn’t exactly what I was going for.
Prompt #2 Dog
For my second prompt I typed in a little more information for what I wanted the image to look like ( girl with wavy brown hair and bangs on the bus, mini australian shepherd, roller skates). Word vomit for sure but this turned out very adorable.
Prompt #3 Roller Rink
Final Image
I added more details for the final image, but the initial results were unsettling. So, I simplified my request and got better results. (girl with wavy brown hair and bangs, roller rink, mini australian shepherd, roller skates).
I haven’t used AI much, but it was fun experimenting with this app. I’m excited to incorporate AI into my photography. Steve Hansen’s work was really inspiring, and it shows that we should learn how to use this new tool instead of being afraid of it or thinking it will replace visual artists.
AI Pros and Cons
AI can be incredibly useful for expanding backgrounds in photography or adding elements to an image. It opens up new possibilities for creativity and enhances the final result. But when it comes to generating images, there is a learning curve involved. It kinda felt like learning a new language in order to achieve the desired outcome. There are better AI apps and software available than the one I used, but I still had a great time creating these images. Describing what you want and what you actually get can be two different things when working with AI. Despite this, my overall experience was positive.