Am I connecting to another human? It’s a fair question.
This past June, my photographer daughter and I were in Albuquerque, NM, and stopped in the Camera & Darkroom photography store. We asked Art, the owner, a few questions which led to a spontaneous and fascinating master class on photography science and theory. Launching the notes app on my phone, I madly typed takeaways. The top two were:
Digital cameras are limited by their mega pixels. Unable to capture the information needed to render an image with detailed accuracy, the camera makes up what it cannot capture.
To illustrate this point, Art led us to a wall where an enlarged color photo of a parrot hung. Pointing to the feathers, he asked us what we saw.
Color, we answered.
But no detail, he offered.
We peered at the feathers. Indeed, there were no details. Just color. The digital camera had captured a portion of the parrot and created presumptive content to fill in the gaps.
Relationship is what differentiates film photography from digital photography. Film photography is relational photography, Art said. The relationship is between the photographer, the physical camera, and the negative. It’s between the photographer and the subject; between the subject and the camera. And weaving through those relationships as they are occurring in each unique moment in time is the palpable energy of the presence of light.
From Art’s explanation, I understood that a photo produced from film embodies an emotional and intellectual relationship with creative light, which is communicated to the audience. But that relationship is absent from a photo produced by a digital camera.
Dr. Christopher White explored this idea of the emotional and intellectual relationship between humans and the things created by them in the “Music Tectonics” podcast, “The Thrilling Tension Between AI and Musical Creativity” (Spotify - 9/10/2025 episode).
“If you care about who made something, it’s really hard to swap out generative AI for that,” he said.
Dr. White, Associate Professor of Music Theory at University of Massachusetts, said listeners may be more likely to bring emotional vulnerability to the musical experience if they have assurance a human, not generative AI, created the music. As AI continues to evolve, he said it may become important for music listeners to differentiate between human-created music and AI-created music before they make an emotional investment.
Am I connecting to another human? It’s a fair question.
When implementing AI tools in the workplace, a fair question to ask is this:
What value does the organization place on a human’s intellectual and emotional investment?
Using AI to scan emails for content related to billing errors is useful. It saves an individual hours of search time and produces an historical account of billing errors. In this case, the value is in providing accurate information to the email recipients.
On the other hand, skipping human creativity and ingenuity to employ AI as a quick marketing-content generator creates a degree of relationship separation. Another fair question is, why should a human invest in a second-hand relationship?
Even if an AI tool has been uploaded with a unique behavior context, trained on an existing catalog of human-authored material, and instructed to generate content in the same tone and voice, has audience trust been violated, even if they’re unaware of the source?
Some prospective customers are satisfied with digital-quality relationships. But others want the authenticity of film. Another question: how can an organization serve both?
This blog was conceived, written, and edited by a human!