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.
Recent writing
Featured
Photography in the Age of AI (2025): 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.
Building a daylight studio
This one is for my Amersfoort folks. It goes Tjommies, OostWest 1, OostWest City, Van Zanten, OostWest, Van Zanten, OW, VZ, OW, VZ, Tjommies, OW, VZ, OW, VZ, OW, VZ
Covering
Walking every street of my hometown, Amersfoort, while photographing every nook and cranny. Documenting the things I see along the way.
It's all out there, right now
A good beach has white sand, they tell you. Preferably as finely grained as possible. Like a powder that's sprinkled on the edges of the land. The frosting on the cake, if you will.
The glorious, life-invigorating act of walking
When I first landed on Craig Mod's website and read he describes himself as a 'writer, photographer, and walker,' I was a little confused. What the hell does it mean to 'be a walker'?
My six favorite Fujifilm film simulation recipes
I think we can all agree that Fujifilm's film simulations are amazing. That's why I have created six film simulation recipes that have been living on both my Fujifilm X100V and X-Pro3 for the better part of a year now.
2025 Recent writing
✦ September
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.
2025 Recent writing
✦ September
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.
2025 Recent writing
✦ September
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.
2025 Recent writing
✦ September
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?
2025 Recent writing
✦ August
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.
2025 Recent writing
✦ August
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.
2025 Recent writing
✦ August
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.
2025 Recent writing
✦ August
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?
2025 Recent writing
✦ August
Studio update, cats, sharing your work & organization
We're back to work with rediscovered vigor and, hopefully, new-found focus.
2025 Recent writing
✦ August
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.
2025 Recent writing
✦ July
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.
2025 Recent writing
✦ July
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.
2025 Recent writing
✦ July
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.
2025 Recent writing
✦ July
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?
2025 Recent writing
✦ July
Closer #013
I'm reconsidering my approach, but I'm not sure I'm willing to change it. Not right now. These are still interesting times we live in.
2025 Recent writing
✦ June
Soul searching in Greece (again)
Tears of relief as I'm waist-deep in the ocean, trying to see if I can dance still. I can, I think, I CAN, I scream. So that's how we make our way over the island. Curious to learn, relieved the fire still burns.
2025 Recent writing
✦ June
Closer #012
Imagine a cat behind a closed door, only paws and nose peeking from under the small crack between the door and the floor. Now imagine it again. How different are those results? Quite a lot, as it turns out.
2025 Recent writing
✦ June
Closer #011
We all know things can get weird in AI image land. But what if you give it a weird image? Will we get twice the weirdness or will they balance each other out?