35
votes
Finding real images
So this isn't your usual art request.
I'm currently looking for REAL photos of either a tiger up close, or African Savannah at sunset with animals in silhouette. Do a Google or Bing search, I dare you.
Where have all the real images gone? Everything is an AI generated crap-fest. Where can I go to find real photographs these days?
I've tried looking through the old Bing Wallpaper archives and found a few decent images there, but Adobe, iStock, everywhere I look it is all computer generated. What happened to real photography?
Thanks.
Edit: Flikr seems to be the place that isn't infested with AI yet!
Wikimedia Commons is a great place for useful photographs (that are usually free to use, too!) Here are some photos of tigers. Just searching for "tiger" worked better than I expected, actually.
Flickr still exists and has a massive back catalog - you might need to do a bit of scrolling to find the exact quality and style of photo you’re looking for, but there’s a good chance it’ll be in there somewhere.
You can also filter by license type (they’ve got >100M Creative Commons images), as well as by upload date if you want a quick way of limiting the search to the pre-AI era.
Unsplash is a pretty good place to look. I haven't seen any AI images on there yet.
This is amazing!
https://unsplash.com/photos/brown-and-black-tiger-showing-tongue-DJ4vjcD0s0I
Yeah it's my go-to when I'm looking for photos. There are others like Pixabay and Freepik, but the quality on those can really vary. Good luck on your search!
Ooohhh guess who just woke up from a nice nap!
Love unsplash! Great for finding nice photos for presentations! I feel like AI photos don't fit well with the photographer portfolio focus of the site so I'm a little hopefully it's maintained to focus on real photographs. If people want to freely share AI photos I feel like the should have their own spinoff site to keep things sorted more easily.
When I search “tiger up close” on google images I get mostly real stock images. Or, at least, they have photographers credited. Seem pretty real.
It must be something to do with my login then because half of the images are AI created when I type that into images.google.com.
Interestingly, if I do advanced search and just set the parameter to be "Over 10MP" I get back real images.
Something that might interest you is the ublacklist extension, which allows you to block certain websites from showing up in your search results. Just as with ad blockers there are also subscription lists available. It isn't perfect, but it has reduced some of my frustration with using search engines these days.
Same experience, "tiger up close" has its first 20 or so images from stock image websites with the photographer credited for each. Interestingly I've been frustrated with my normal search results being cluttered with AI bullshit, but now that I think about it my image searches are pretty clean still. I wonder why, but am not complaining.. about the image searches that is..
I was about to comment the same, there are 8 results that are likely AI generated as ublacklist blocks those (highly recommend that extension).
All your animals are here. https://www.lifeonwhite.com/ royalty free and beautiful :)
Is there a savannah on white? Haha. My best guess would be old copies of NatGeo for that kind of photography ☠️ ⛵
I will also echo that search has indeed become a garbage pile on fire
Looks like some have natural backgrounds. I wasn't able to find one for a tiger, though, the results were full of housecats and butterflies.
Tigers https://www.lifeonwhite.com/m/-/galleries/vertebrates/mammals/felines/wild-cat/tigers
I guess their search isn't as good as their category indexes :)
Made me laugh when I saw "one of each specie" but that's a neat site!
Silhouette may have been the wrong term. I'm looking for this sort of shot.
I tried google image from search "wildlife photography award Serengeti lion sunset" without quotes. Sort of like Serengeti animals backlit by sunset sort of thing?
This one looks good
https://www.jasonedwards.co/products/jason-edwards-serengeti-sunset-fine-art-print
"tiger Serengeti" won't work because tigers don't live on the Serenget but I think there should be zebras and gazelles that sort of thing. let me know what animal you're looking for I'll try to help
Try searching wildlife photography of the year as well from
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/wpy
Kagi allows you to filter out AI images in search results. It also downranks them by default.
I’d be really curious how it identifies them.
Everyone needs to decide for themselves, but kagi does come with other baggage and in the end also is an AI company first. Some people don't mind all this, others do. I am just putting it here for those who do.
Thanks for sharing [the second link]. I read most of it, though I'm not interested enough to go looking for rebuttals or such, for balance.
I was in Kenya on the Maasai Mara in 2020 and took lots of photos. No tigers, but lions, cheetahs, giraffes, etc. Would that be of interest? I can send you some if that's what you're looking for.
Thank you for the offer!
I don't suppose you have any sunrise or sunset shots, do you? The tiger image we wanted has now been located, and the photographer paid.
My wife is being oddly specific in what she wants.
It's possible, although the mornings were misty and we didn't go out really in the evening. I'll PM you a link to the closest I have to that readily on hand.
Sweet. Thanks @F13.
That sounds like such a cool cool trip! I've always wanted to see big cats in their homes....always felt sad seeing them at the zoo . Was it a private or work trip? Asking because while I also want to see Kenya, great barrier Reef, Amazon etc I also don't want to contribute to the habitat destruction by going...... So conflicted
It was a trip for a friend's wedding!
Perspectives will vary, of course, but if you ask most of the locals they will say please, please come and support the local industries that provide an economic reason for conservation.
On some level, without government intervention (which is unlikely on a large scale), people paying to go on safari is what makes the land more valuable as a habitat than as farming land (or any other use).
There is some impact, of course, and that perspective is not necessarily the "correct" one.
Hmmmm it reminds me of how, in Canada, the best way to protect tiny cute burrowing owls is actually to pay farmers to install cute tunnels for them: the money signal importance, as well as compensate for parts of the land not to be farmed.
What a cool trip! And thank you for your perspective, I'm mulling it over hopefully before it's too late to see ...
All of those aside, you should also be able to do a filtered google search for content with dates prior to approximately october 2021 (or whenever dall-e was released), no?
That's pretty much how I had to do the search in the end - go back a few years.
All results are going to be tarnished going forward, with AI generated trash all through it.
500px is as far as I'm aware only photography still, let me know how you get on!