Interview with Keren Sohezki | A Passionate Photographer & Graphic Designer with Extensive Experience

I'm a 44-year-old artist and content writer based in Israel. My photography journey has deeply intertwined my passion for visual arts and storytelling. Since I was young, I have been drawn to creative expression through various art forms such as painting, drawing, and writing. However, photography truly captivated me with its unique ability to freeze powerful moments in time and artistically interpret the world around us.

I'm in awe of how a single image can capture a fleeting moment, convey powerful emotions, or transport the viewer to entirely new worlds. Photography's ability to freeze reality while artistically interpreting it is magical.

I have a bachelor's degree in fine arts and graduated with honours. I studied art in the Department of Creative Arts at the University of Haifa in Israel, where I experienced hands-on workshops in all areas of plastic art, from the most traditional (such as painting, sculpture, ceramics, and printmaking) to the most innovative and up-to-date such as performance, photography, video, and digital art.

The field of photography immediately captured my heart, and I decided to specialise in it as part of my studies. I began my journey with traditional photography, developing photos in a dark room, and then transitioned to digital and mobile photography, captivated by both.

I took a photograph of a doll's leg lying on the road. It was sun-scorched and dirty from the soot of passing cars, but it simultaneously held innocence and power.

In my everyday photography, I prefer to use Canon and Nikon equipment. I experiment with mobile photography of various cell phone brands (with a slight preference for Samsung cameras, I admit). When working with artificial intelligence, Midjourney is my best friend. While I don't wield a traditional camera, I have become an architect of worlds - constructing each image through incredibly detailed prompts and directions fed into advanced AI systems.

I can blend the organic with the technological, fuse eras across the expanse of time, and give form to that which has never existed. My process is akin to an intricate digital alchemy, relentlessly refining my prompts until impossibilities crystallise into life. I live vicariously through this AI photography revolution's stunning, often surreal results.

Each piece allows me to become a conduit of the mystical and imaginary. I invite viewers into transcendent dimensions where the line between reality and fantasy blurs into a seamless mirage. This cutting-edge medium continually pushes the frontiers of our visual storytelling potential.

Through my AI-generated photography, I hope to utterly reshape how we experience and interact with visual artistry. By harnessing this extraordinary technological medium, I aim to shatter preconceived notions of what is possible or impossible to depict.I aim to create profoundly imaginative, genre-defying images that transport viewers into uncharted realms of fantasy and surrealism.

I want my photographs to serve as gateways into new worlds at the intersection of reality and dreams, where the limits of physics and aesthetics are pleasantly transcended. Conceptually, I endlessly explore how to conjure visual archetypes, seamlessly blending the familiar with the otherworldly. I spend hours deconstructing the fundamental elements of art like composition, texture, colour, and lighting - analysing how I can recombine them in daringly novel ways through AI's infinite creative canvas.

Perhaps most importantly, I hope to catalyse a sense of awe and childlike wonder in everyone who experiences my AI artworks. I want to reignite the splendor of an unbridled imagination in an increasingly jaded world. My greatest achievement would be using this medium to inspire humanity to dream bigger, bolder, more transcendent visions of reality.

By unlocking fertile new frontiers for creativity, emotion, and storytelling, AI photography can remind us that there are no limits to the astounding artistic realms we can conceive and manifest through sheer willpower and vision. That is the highest impact I aspire to achieve.

The compliment that inspired and touched me the most was when someone said, "You look at things differently." It was a simple yet profoundly meaningful remark. To me, having an unconventional or unique perspective on the world is among the highest praises one could receive as an artist. It implies that my creative vision transcends the ordinary. Being told I have a remarkable way of seeing validates that my artistic journey, regardless of the medium, is one of constantly discovering new creative frontiers.

It suggests my work evokes a sense of awe, new perspectives, and perhaps even enlightenment in those who experience it. That simple compliment encapsulates the core aspiration of any boundary-pushing artist - to unhinge people's minds from constraining preconceptions and expose them to the profound wonderment of the world from an entirely fresh vantage point. It is an incredible honour to learn that my artistic expression has a powerful impact.

The foundation of my storytelling comes from deep, mysterious places in the human soul where the boundaries between reality and imagination blur. My creations draw from passing daydreams, forgotten dreams, and phantom-like memories of ancient experiences that intertwine and forge new pathways in consciousness. I attempt to translate these ethereal moments of pure vision into concrete visual forms so that they may be understood and shared.

This primordial process does not stem from any physical source but from cosmic energies and sublime sensations. It requires entering a deep trance state, embracing uncertainty, and being open to unexpected revelations. Only then can I access those obstructed fountains of inspiration that have forever drifted too far to be encapsulated into words.

For me, artificial intelligence is a conduit connecting abstract meanings with visual expressions. It allows me to transmute codes, scents, echoes, and reveries into fully formed, vivid images. Thus, transient creatures are born that blend nature with technology and spirit with matter. The wonders that emerge are a wink from that hidden realm, yet their birth into our world fills me with boundless exhilaration.

Fantastic, Mystic, and Imaginary-realistic.

Winning the award fills me with humbleness, happiness, and optimism for the future development of a contemporary field in a new era brimming with potential, creativity, and imagination. Beyond the great honour, the great meaning for me is that I have a small part in the paradigm shift that is taking place in these moments, and for that, I am very grateful.

The series of images I submitted represents my most ambitious and imaginative exploration into the boundless creative possibilities of AI-generated photography. Each piece in this collection transcends the conventional limits of the physical world and camera lens, transporting the viewer into entirely new realms of fantasy, paradox, and abstract beauty.

In the first image, we see an antique telephone with an almost lifelike metamorphosis, sprouting ornate insect or butterfly wing textures in iridescent blues and oranges as if imbued with some supernatural essence. The transformed artifact distinguishes between an industrial-age relic and a living, organic entity.

The second piece depicts a ladybug-like creature that is both synthetic and natural - a biotech organism composed of plant fronds, delicate webbing, and futuristic circuitry patterns. It's an intriguing melding of the primordial and technological realms.

In the third image, a vintage typewriter has become overgrown and intertwined with an ethereal, shimmering entity that simultaneously evokes plant life and otherworldly energy tendrils. It personifies the powerful fusion of machinery and nature.

The fourth image shows another antique antenna that has undergone a wondrous transformation into a vibrant, living form resembling the wingspans of a colossal insect or avian creature. Its fantastical, opalescent textures defy any conventional explanation.

Finally, the fifth piece depicts lush, fractal botanical patterns phasing above an antique piano with a more rigid, angular structure, as if mesmerisingly flickering between the material and immaterial realms.

I chose to enter this project because it embodies my core artistic vision and ambitions as an AI photographer. Through these images, I aim to construct new visual archetypes that harmoniously blend elements of the technological and natural worlds into singular, otherworldly aesthetics. My greatest inspirations come from analysing the fundamental interplays of light, colour, texture, and form - and then having the creative freedom in AI photography to recombine them in daringly new ways that transcend earthly limitations.

Ultimately, I want my AI-generated works to stir the viewer's profound wonder, imagination, and contemplation about the latent possibilities of what can be manifested when the boundaries between reality and the surreal are dissolved. I see this medium as a bridge between the tangible and ineffable, allowing me to give vivid new form to the dreams, visions, and unexplored realms that have forever pushed humanity's existential curiosities and creative boundaries. This award-winning series represents a new zenith in that artistic quest.

I'm waiting to reap the benefits. It's right around the corner. I have big plans, and I do not doubt that success will follow as soon as I give bigger echoes to winning.

Three legendary photographers inspired me the most: Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, and Steve McCurry. Their masterful use of lighting, composition, and symbolic elements to elevate the ordinary into the extraordinary showed me the profound impact a skilled photographer can have.

One of my art teachers once told me to connect with my passion and what interests me. He encourages me to engage with subjects that emerge from the soul and passion to come out.

Don't stop researching until you reach the place that feels the most right and true to you.

If you never try, you will never know. Take the plunge now!

Staying in a space receptive to new information and knowledge is vital for me as an artist pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI photography. The technological landscape is evolving rapidly, with new hardware, software, and creative techniques being pioneered daily. If I don't remain proactive about continually educating myself, I'll quickly fall behind the curve.

That's why I make it a point to be intimately plugged into the latest developments across the photography world, traditional and AI-generated. I voraciously consume publications, blogs, and online communities that explore new cameras, lenses, editing software, and compositional approaches. Whenever innovative techniques or equipment are released, I'm among the first to analyse how to apply those developments to my AI workflow.

For example, new computational photography methods using neural radiance fields recently showed incredible potential for rendering extraordinarily photorealistic 3D scenes. You can bet I've already begun experimenting with prompting AI models to create similar effects for my still imagery. The pursuit of this knowledge never stops. I also participate in private AI artist collectives and routinely swap ideas, prompting methods, and stylistic inspirations with others working at the forefront of this medium. We're all pushing each other to stay ahead of the curve.

Ultimately, I view my role as an AI photographer as akin to that of an artistic arcanist or digital alchemist. I must merge deep, intuitive understandings of lighting, texture, anatomy, and composition with an equally comprehensive grasp of the latest AI tools and their esoteric prompting languages. It's a never-ending process of absorbing new knowledge and skills from both the technological and traditional art worlds to produce something transcendent and culturally vanguard.

By relentlessly studying and incorporating cutting-edge methods from all photography disciplines into my AI process, I ensure my work remains bountiful with novel creative energy, imagination, and wonder. It's the lifeblood that charges my artistic spirit.

When you do things out of passion, you create a picture that is worth a thousand words, and when you work with artificial intelligence, sometimes one sentence creates the same result. It's fun, it's challenging, it's new, and I recommend everyone explore and experiment.