Like so many folks in the Visual Arts & Entertainment Production industries, economics and industry changes have affected my life as well as several personal changes on my journey. Major life events happen. We move on and collect ourselves and reinvent ourselves as everything around us changes. I know a lot of my friends and colleagues have gone through the trenches with the changing landscape of technologies over the decades – many of whom are still worried about AI replacing their careers entirely. I’m personally trying to discover my place in all of this as well, but for the most I’ve been embracing Generative AI for a few years and am excited to see how it’s progressed as tools we can all utilize in one form or another.
Those who know my professional history and have followed my presenting, training and writing since the 90’s (my first Photoshop book published in 1993), I’ve seen so many changes and challenges throughout my digital career, that I have learned to not overreact to new ideas and technologies.
I first went fully “digital” around 1990, after a decade of traditional media in mechanical engineering drawing and airbrush illustrations for commercial, aerospace and the music industry painting album covers. Everything changed in the industry for print and now a whole new world of possibilities emerged with our ability to scan photos and artwork and create and design content for print on our own desktops. Of course, everybody had a nephew with a Mac who could “easily design our brochures and marketing materials” and the influx of horribly-designed crap started spewing out of laser printers around the globe.
Then a few years later, the Internet became the new frontier for designers and programmers to build websites that soon choked to a halt with over-burdened Flash content, “because we can!”.
Follow that movement and the evolution that emerged from the plethora of over-zealous web designers to the late 2000’s where video was actually starting to take off for the “every-person-with-a-smartphone” and social media driving content. Now we have YouTubers with channels garnering more traffic to view their UGC videos (User Generated Content) than many broadcast streams.
Fast forward (just a little) to today where AI is making waves in every aspect of our lives – not just generating crazy visuals and deepfake crap, but also how we are managing our business, services and even our lives.
Around 2016 I had taken a full-time corporate job for a large Biotech firm shortly after relocating from Southern California (since 1980) up to the Bay Area as most of my work and contacts were coming from San Francisco and around “Silly-Con Valley” – folks may recall that I was deep into the drone world since 2012 – and I was just coming down before the implosion of the drone industry and took on a role of developing a full media group for their corporate marketing group. I had a good run even doing product photos in my garage at home during the Covid pandemic until I was laid off late 2024.
Picking myself back up again after some major life challenges and relocating to the East coast for the first time in my life, I’m excited for this next chapter in my life and what I can accomplish and contribute as we dig through the processes and technologies we use to continue creating.
Don’t worry – I’ve been here before, folks.
It’s going to be okay. We all will be.
Please join me on this journey and let’s discover new ideas together!
Thanks for being here.
Jeff