Light Hunters. With Soul

 

It all begins with a ray of light. With a shadow. With a reflection. With a question. It's a quiet thought that occurs in the dead of night, when everyone is asleep and your gear is gathering dust.

Something you once loved now stares back at you like an ex — the kind that still knows all your secrets: your camera. That old road companion. And you wonder: What’s the point anymore?

Because these days, your biggest competition isn’t another photographer. It’s something with no eyes. No soul. Just a prompt, an algorithm, and some circuits glued onto a slab of silicon.

 

Motto:
“We think; therefore, we are.”

 

The soul behind the lens

I’ve been doing photography and video long enough to remember the smell of photo chemicals on my fingers in the darkroom — believe it or not, latex gloves were a luxury back then. I remember how blinding halogen lights could be at weddings. I remember falling in love with the sound of the shutter — before DSLRs muffled it and mirrorless systems silenced it completely.

And I remember that, back then, the scariest thing wasn’t AI.
It was overexposure. Or worse — accidental double exposure, because yes, that happened. Or forgetting to pack enough rolls of film.

And still, I’ve lived long enough to watch it all change.

At first, I was competing with other people. Some more talented. Some better connected. Some better equipped. That was fair. That was the game.

Now?

You look left — someone’s filming with a phone and scoring viral reels.
You look right — a faceless account cranks out AI “portraits” every ten minutes. Smoking hot babes that make you raise an eyebrow or cats flipping burgers on a grill.

No studio. No lights. No sweat.
Just a keyboard and a well-placed filter.

And it works.
Oh yeah, it works.

It could drive you mad. Or it might just make you take a deep breath, look off into the distance, and start asking yourself uncomfortable questions.

Because maybe it’s no longer about competition. Maybe it’s about what’s still left of you in the things you create.

Because no matter how realistic the AI image may be, it still lacks one essential thing: the memory.

AI can generate a sunset.
But it can’t feel the cold in the air.
It can’t recognize the moment when light hits someone’s hair and makes them look… different. Real. Fragile. Human?

That’s the soul I’m talking about.
The one behind the lens — the one no line of code can ever replicate.

 

The cave, 2025 edition

You’ve surely heard of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. People chained in darkness, watching shadows flicker on the wall, convinced that’s reality. A metaphor — but today, it feels uncomfortably real.

Only now, the chains are made of comfort. Or — let’s call it like it is — laziness.
The shadows are in 4K. And the algorithms serve you what you want, sometimes before you even know you want it.

And we, the photographers and videographers — the ones who once chased light — have become like the guy who escapes the cave, sees the real world, and comes back to share his discovery…

…only to be mocked.

“The shadows look better, bro! Chill. Come sit with us. Have a beer. Cut it with the ‘real world’ nonsense.”

Because real light — the kind without quotation marks — is unpredictable.
It comes when it wants.
Real people blink. Move. Age. Cry.
Real photoshoots go wrong. Batteries die even with five bars. The weather shifts. Couples fight.

Oh, the stories I could tell you just about weddings where the bride and groom argued…

But AI doesn’t deal with any of that. AI is... clean.

And life?

Life shouldn’t just be clean. It should be, above all, honest.

Because sometimes, right in the middle of the chaos, magic happens.
A frame. A glance. A fleeting moment. The kind that never comes back.

You don’t generate that.
You live it.

 

The spark that doesn’t fade

Socrates said: “I know that I know nothing.”

That wasn’t cynicism. It was curiosity. Openness. Humility in the face of the infinite. That’s what makes us human.

I’ll admit — I’ve asked myself many times lately: “What do I still want from my cameras?
And maybe… what do they still want from me?”

No shame in admitting it — the passion has faded a bit. That thrill I used to feel when composing a shot or catching the light just right... it’s dimmed. Like a radio station slipping out of tune.

Yeah, I mean those old analogue ones we used to listen to secretly — Radio Free Europe. You had to keep turning the dial every few seconds or you’d lose Neculai Constantin Munteanu in the static.

And yet… I can’t walk away.

Because sometimes something happens.

I see a scene — a person, a child, a flower swaying in the wind, with a bee landing softly on it. A moment. And before I know it, I lift the camera. Reflex. Muscle memory. Heart.

And boom — there it is.

That feeling.

That invisible thread between you and the world that whispers:
"Yes. This one’s worth keeping."

 

Not the enemy. But not the master, either

Let’s be clear: I don’t hate AI.

I use AI-powered noise reduction in Photoshop.
This very text came together after bouncing some ideas around with an AI that helped me sort through the clutter in my head.

I’ve tested the tools. Explored them. Challenged them.
Occasionally I kept what came out and built on it. Other times, I just hit delete and moved on.

Folks — AI is not the enemy.
But the lies told around it?
That’s the problem.

If you generate a fantasy image and say, “Here’s something I imagined” — that’s fair. That’s art.
It may have some Dadaist elements at times, but it is still art.

But if you say, “I took this photo”. That you were there, that it’s your fieldwork, your feeling, your vision…

Then what is that, if not a form of imposture?

Photography is more than just aesthetics. It’s about presence.

You were there.
You chose.
You waited.
You felt.

That matters.
That’s the difference.
Especially now.

 

In a world of copies, be the original

In a peculiar turn of events, expressing honesty now feels akin to defiance.

We live in a world where faking is faster, cheaper, and—for some—good enough.
But “good enough” is where creativity goes to die.

I’ll take one imperfect, lived frame — flaws and all — over a hundred perfectly generated, soulless images. Dead, like a fish’s eye. And no, I’m not talking about that fisheye lens that makes your shots look like you’re spying through a front door peephole.

It might sound odd, but I can still remember nearly every time I fell in love with a frame.
Every time I got chills behind the camera. Every time someone cried watching a video and whispered: “That’s exactly how it was.”

No one can take that from me.

Like that time, shooting a wedding in the Caribbean. I showed the couple their video, and both burst into tears.

At first, I thought something had gone wrong.

But then they both hugged me and said, “Man, we don’t even have words to thank you.”

That’s when I knew I’d captured the essence of that day. What it meant to them.

Sure, the envelope with many Benjamins he slipped me after the hugs didn’t hurt either —
but hey, let’s not ruin the mood.
You get the idea.

 

Conclusion (for now)

I don’t know if we — the “old-school,” the real light-hunters — will survive this wave.
At least it won't be in the same shape or setup that we're still struggling to maintain.

Maybe we’ll become those “beautiful weirdos.” Maybe we’ll be seen as obsolete. Maybe the budgets will shift to fast tools and sterile looks. Maybe AI-generated portfolios will flood the market.

But here’s what I do know:

I’m still here.

I'll keep creating as long as I have breath, a lens, and a story to tell.

Truthfully. Deliberately. Fully lived.

Perhaps, in the end, the soul behind the lens isn't just about the image.

Maybe it’s about the choice to be present. To feel.

To say:

“I was there. I saw the light.
And I want you to see it too.”