Why have I posted an ancient image of mine of a Snowy Owl when talking about AI? It’s because there are all these horrible AI-generated images and videos of Snowy Owl in a nest with these adorable chicks perched on a TREE! There are no TREES in the Arctic. Snowy Owls nest on the ground. But if you don’t know this basic biology, how would you know what you’re seeing is AI-generated? And that’s what gives me a headache!

Being informed is always the best weapon when our sensibilities are under siege. In this day and age though, staying informed, educated, is a fulltime job all by itself. When I look to get informed, only to find AI crud, it makes it really hard to get informed to be able to recognize AI outside my sphere of knowledge. It just gives me a headache!

What gets me is, history is repeating itself. Back in May, 1998, The Atlantic published an article, Photography in the Age of Falsification. This was long before AI, heck, the internet was in its infancy, and yet, there it is in print. Knowing this doesn’t lessen the headache. We MUST stay diligent and informed! Thirty years later, we kinda have the same issue with the same root cause, it’s just that the elephant on the screen is AI.

I keep adding to my DoDad list as I find items that work, making the field experience just that tad finer. The latest is the Bambaw water bottle. Big mouth, easy to refill so more plastic isn’t being thrown into landfills. Bamboo insulation keeps water cold all day and fits easily into the side pocket of pants, camera bags, briefcase. The Win.Max ice cleats go on and off so easily and grab onto ice, providing sure footing. These items and more can be found here.

At the end of the day, when I’m on the road, I grab all the cards out of the cameras and put them … wherever I can find that is flat. I then start cycling through them to ingest them. I did this the other day on the coach in a lodge and when I sat down, two cards went off my computer deck into the cushion and then … into the dark recesses of the lodge coach. What a nightmare. It’s then I got out the ProGrade Pro Card Caddy! I had received it just as I was walking out the door and had forgotten I had it until I was digging through cushions (miserable task at a lodge). Then it was obvious to me how the Caddy would save me time. The magnetic bottom holds it securely on the deck of the notebook. I can load it with the cards to be ingested and then once that is done, put them back in opposite order until they are all ingested. With each body having 2 cards, stills, and video, it’s completely logical and a perfect product. Yeah, it can hold an AppleTag, with the cover it could go in your camera bag, but might be a bit of a space hog. But when it comes to getting images into the computer, it’s ingenious! It’s a whole lot better then searching through coach cushions!