How clear is your vision?
This month I reflect on clarity, the birth of 33punt, and why integrated creativity isn’t a luxury but a necessity. If you want to know what we’re building, and why it matters, this one’s for you.
Mitchel Lensink
Photographer and writer working on long-term projects that uncover the overlooked beauty and quiet goodness in the world, shared in my monthly newsletter Dialogue.
It takes years, and that’s fine
Back to Berlin I go. For reasons unknown to me too. But, over the years, despite no apparent goals, a body of work is emerging. And that’s interesting.
Covering L'Estartit, an intermezzo
Learning more about my current project by doing a different project in between.
Photography in the Age of AI: Lessons From 25 Weeks of Experimentation
Over 25 weeks, I tested whether AI can match the emotion and imperfection of human photography. The results? AI is fast and functional but still sterile. Here’s what this experiment reveals about the future of photography in the age of AI.
Closer #024
The soul of an image can not and will not be generated by computers. Humans create human experiences. Humans connect to human experiences. Computers are mimicking that very closely, but you can always tell.
Closer #023
Whatever time I have left, I spend wrecking my brain over the conclusions of this soon-to-be 25 weeks of AI-experimentation. It's taking shape, albeit slowly, and this week is very helpful with that.
Closer #022
We're slowly reaching conclusions in the final weeks of this experiment. Now is the time to share your suggestions if you still want to become part of it.
Newer Topographics
Why take it upon myself to dedicate my time and energy towards a goal that isn’t even clearly visible from the beginning. Will it matter if I don’t? What do I contribute, do I want to contribute? Why? To what? Again, why?
Closer #021
To bring the 2025 series of Closer to a fruitful end, bestowed upon us is the opportunity to revisit its first editions. A newly release GPT-5 Prompting Guide breathes new life into our previously tried tests.
Closer #020
GPT-5 is out and underwhelming. Our mini six-week experiment has come to an end. There's only five more regular editions of this newsletter before we wrap up with some preliminary conclusions in edition #25.
Closer #019
GPT-5 is out! That's just in time for the last edition of our 6-week experiment using the same image. I'm curious to find out of this new model brings any improvements.
Closer #018
The second-to-last edition of this experiment within an experiment, where AI gets to not only describe the image, and then generate an image based on said description, but also determine how to describe the image. Succes, finally?
Studio update, cats, sharing your work & organization
We're back to work with rediscovered vigor and, hopefully, new-found focus.
Crossing
A walk from one edge of a city to the other — west to east, north to south. A straight line through a place to see what connects its opposite sides.
Closer #017
After this week, there's two more editions of the same image being described in different ways. Thankfully, because it's not bringing us anywhere. But that's interesting to note in itself too.
Closer #016
We are sixteen weeks into this experiment, and I'm unsure if this is still providing value. This is the third week we let AI decide how to prompt and the results are... well, you be the judge.
Closer #015
Week two of our 'experiment within an ongoing experiment' where AI is not only doing the image description and generation, but is also deciding the prompting to get to that description.
Closer #014
Hey, so, thought: you know how we're already generating AI-images, based on AI-descriptions of real life images, right? What if... we also asked ChatGPT how to properly ask for those descriptions? Would that make it better?