03/10/2026
The Enemy Within?
I am slightly perplexed this morning. Why?
I was sitting in my office early this morning with a coffee, nursing a bit of a hangover and reflecting on the activities of the last week.
Some of the team at White Horse Radio have been playing around with AI, producing PR material for upcoming programmes, and I have to say, we’ve all been pretty impressed with the results.
Over the last 12 months, I’ve also been dipping in and out of planning my Associateship panel as I work towards gaining my distinction from the Royal Photographic Society.
One of the images I’ve been developing is titled “The Enemy Within.”
The idea was provoked by my previous career at BT. During the 1990s, I watched first-hand as the Payphone estate went into decline while the mobile phone market exploded. In what seemed like a remarkably short space of time, a new technology effectively wiped out a multi-million-pound industry.
I have had a very clear idea in my head of what The Enemy Within should look like.
I’d tracked down a few derelict red K6 telephone kiosks. I had a mate and his dogs lined up for the photograph, and I’d had numerous discussions with a good friend of mine, who is a great photographer, about how best to light the shot on the day and what we could then do in post-production.
In other words, quite a bit of thought and planning had already gone into an image that, so far, didn’t actually exist.
Then, after all the fun we’d had playing with AI during the week, I asked myself a question…
I can see the image in my mind. I know exactly what I want it to say. So, if I describe that vision clearly enough to my friendly AI, what will it produce?
Within ten minutes, the image you see here had been created.
I was gobsmacked!
But the truth is, this little exercise has left me with far more questions than I could ever have imagined.
The image isn’t quite there. It still has the fingerprints of AI all over it. At the moment, I can’t even be completely specific about what those fingerprints are — I just know they are there.
But I’m equally sure that, as the technology develops, and with a few human tweaks, those fingerprints will become increasingly difficult to see.
And then what?
The concept for this image was developed in my head. The story behind it is mine. The message is mine. The composition was already imagined. The location, character, mood and lighting had all been considered.
All I have really done is use a completely different pathway to arrive at the end result.
Haven’t I?
And that is the question that is bothering me.
Is this a legitimate pathway for a photographer to go down?
Photography itself has always evolved. Glass plates gave way to film. Film was largely superseded by digital technology — although, granted, film is enjoying something of a comeback. Darkroom manipulation became Photoshop, and techniques that once took hours can now be achieved in minutes.
So, is AI simply the next stage in that evolution?
Or are we approaching the point where the camera itself could become optional?
And perhaps there is a delicious irony here.
The Enemy Within was conceived as an image about one technology destroying another. The mobile phone, sitting inside the remains of a redundant telephone kiosk, represents the technology that ultimately helped kill it.
Yet I have now used AI to create an image about technological redundancy — and in doing so, I find myself questioning the future relevance of the very tool I have spent most of my life using.
The camera.
Maybe The Enemy Within has suddenly acquired a second meaning that I never intended.
All I know is that my hangover feels a bloody sight worse now.
