50 Powerful Images Made by Photographers, Not Machines

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For a frereshing break from the sameness of GenAI imagery, immerse yourself into the still vital act of photography in 50 winning images from All About Photo Awards 2025.

The images are powerful in subject message, represent photographers from around the world, and represent a deep dip into the power of photography as the storytelling of people, places, culture.

Enjoy the scroll, but I am interested if you share one image that viscerally makes you pause, and say inwardly, “Wow”. It’s not easy.

Black and white image of an Emirati girl standing beside Arabian horses on a beach.
Black and white image of an Emirati girl standing beside Arabian horses on a beach.1920×1322 210 KB

Bond of Grace © Donell Gumiran

Sila, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates — An Emirati girl stands beside her Arabian horse, a portrait of strength, tradition, and grace. Their bond echoes resilience and the spirit of heritage. Her pride and passion reflect a deep cultural legacy, carrying tradition forward with honor and hope.

I could have easily picked like 30 others.

Your turn!

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I love this mysterious image: Untitled by Doris Mitch. No information.
And I contend cameras are machines.

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image960×1200 119 KB

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Thanks for sharing this @cogdog! Looking through the images is eye-opening, each one tells a story that touches the soul in its own way.

My vote goes to Abdelrahman Alkahlout (Palestine) @abd.pix96
It made me think of all those who lost their lives because of the genocidal acts of the israeli military forces. Many of the 53,010 martyrs, just yesterday over 75 more were killed, had no one left to bury them, many couldn’t be recognised because of the brutality of the killing and many had their body parts put in plastic bags or still under the rubbles. The article author put some details about this photo but failed to name the situation for what it truly is, it is a genocide (not a war).

What struck me most in the photos was the sheer weight of misery in the world. Adding to the misery of the people of Palestine, the young men struggle in a ship graveyard in Angola to earn just $150 per ton (image by @francesco_gioia_street). The story of Melani and the inner sadness that is visible in her eyes, captured by @martina.holmberg.92. The shepherd in Kenya, his body reduced to a skeletal frame, silently bears witness to the devastating impact of climate change (photo by @mauriziodipietro_). And another one from Bangladesh, where you see a worker climbs a towering pile of discarded plastic bottles, an image that echoes the words of @msf_jitu: “We throw things away in seconds; others carry the weight of it—literally.”

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Absolutely a compelling image, Mark.

And I’d contend a camera is a device, originally mechanical, with a single purpose to pass an amount of light through a hole. It’s a device used by people. You would contend the same thing about AI.

Yet I can’t really equate them.

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Well selected, Mais as well as your insight of the photos reflecting

Through which we might speculate ideally could show the lightness of hope.

The plastic bottles images was almost my choice, and the details of it in the caption in which it’s making is so much more than a shutter click. Thank you so much

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First I’ll select my photo, as asked, and it’s the Tbilisi demonstrations, partially because I’ve stood in the same spot where the demonstrations are now happening.

But I would contest the implicit proposal that AI could do no better. True, today’s AI could do no better, because it can’t get out there and photograph real scenes. But we’ve recently had a case where drones are taking photos of people using their phones in cars. We’re not far from having AI photographers getting out there and taking real images (something like this, and not ‘booking a vacation for you’, is the real use case for agentic AI).

But that said, it is arguable that not all 50 could have been taken by AI. The photos break down into roughly two categories: live action, and posed.

The live action photos depend on, as I mentioned, there being a photographer with a camera at the location. Many AI photos will be taken of places too difficult or dangerous for humans. The AI will select the best of these. But in some other cases (especially some of the deeply personal or medical images) I imagine AI won’t take the photo because it won’t be allowed to. We are not ready to let AI that deeply into our lives.

The posed photos could in theory be shot by an AI, but what they require on the part of the photographer is not just the taking of the photo - which could indeed be done by the AI, automatically managing the settings and combining images through HDR or focus shifting - but also in the staging of the scene. This in theory could be done by an AI, but is less likely to.

The posed photo isn’t just a creation, but is actually the result of a relationship being established between the subject and the photographer. Often they are nameless faceless ‘models’ who could be interchanged with anyone (and of course the AI could set this all up) but just as often the photo is the result of a shared vision between the photographer and the subject.

One could use AI to take staged photos of themselves, but it’s really difficult to be the subject of the photo and the viewer of the photo at the same time. The range of the ‘selfie’ format is limited. Through interaction, photographer and subject can iterate their way to a qualify image - it’s not really a collaboration, because each are seeing different things, but it’s not client-server either, because each contributes to the creative act.

I think that this specific activity - the creation of something unique and in many respects (aesthetic, economic, practical) valuable by people with distinct agency and points of view, is something very difficult to do with an AI. Moreover, it would be nearly impossible to replicate the experience of participating in such an interaction. And that is what is being caught by some of these photos.

There aren’t many of these in the set but I’ll nominate the plastic bottle waste photo as the best of them.

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Ahh but I made no such proposal that photorealistic imagery was impossible, I was tracking in 2022 examples like

That was done by someone with deep experience in Midjourney. But will average person tossing prompts in a box get there? Or another way. Just because I have the same kind of electric guitar sitting in my den, will I just pick it up and play like Jimi Hendrix?

I’m not too sure what use of drones to take images connects here a drone is just a flying camera device.

But you speak of AI making images or photos. How will AI on its own ever decide to make an image to capture the feeling of a moment? Will it ever be fascinated by the brilliance of light in the golden hour or the emotion in the face of a child on the streets? AI will never make art for the sake of it. It may be used well by someone to maybe generate an image “like” some of these, but it will only maybe statistically generate what sounds like a reason why.

I am sure if you had 50 conversations with the photographers who made these images, they will be able to say what the saw in their mind before they took the image.

I’m sure you can counter Munir ta, but just because someone with AI tools can maybe make synthetic imagery similar, you as a photographer would understand that making that photo while having the experience of seeing it, being there, is more than the mechanical act of clicking a button.

And, will “AI” ever do this freely on its own?

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I was responding to the phrases “Made by Photographers, Not Machines” and “a frereshing break from the sameness of GenAI imagery” in the original post. I took these to be “the implicit proposal that AI could do no better.”

I think, if we are judging by the result, AI could do just as well and maybe better.

What you are claiming in your response is a bit different. You’re saying, essentially, that AI could do no better on its own. Eg. when you say “How will AI on its own ever decide to make an image to capture the feeling of a moment?” and “will “AI” ever do this freely on its own?”

I don’t think we’re ready to actually allow AI complete autonomy, so at a certain level AI will be dependent on at least some prompt. But suppose we simply asked an AI to “produce a high-quality photo” or “high-quality music” (to bring in the Jimi Hendrix experience). Would it be able to “say what the saw in their mind before they took the image” and “be fascinated by the brilliance of light in the golden hour or the emotion in the face of a child on the streets?”

I think it could. It would need to learn to do this, to read articles like the one you shared (which serves the same purpose for humans as for AI, to express a view on what counts as quality photos), to be able to imagine a story in a scene they see through the camera and then take a picture that captures that story, to (if you will) use emotion-detection to recognize emotion in a face, and then capture an overall image that reflects that emotion. Like a human photographer, it would need a range of experiences, and to generate thousands of photos, sharing many of them for feedback and criticism.

I think that, given the same sort of experience and feedback a human would have had, it would produce similar or even better results.

Final note: I wonder how much of our interpretation of the photos in this article is preconditioned on being told that they were taken by humans. A lot of what is ‘seen’ in a photo comes from the observer. When we say a photo is telling a story, how much of that is us, the viewer, imagining a story and then attributing it to the photo? How much of that would change if someone told us, say, that an AI took the photo?

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I always appreciate Stephen that you engaged in back and forth conversation, but I guess one day soon our Ai generated selves can do this for us :wink:

I have no doubt people can and will use GenAi to synthesize photo-realistic images as you say, as good or better than the examples here. To me, though, that says the only import thing to us is what it can produce, the product.

To me, the value of my photos, when looking back, is a reminder and connection to the experience of being in a place, people, like hanging out with colleagues after a conference in Vancouver and retelling favorite hockey moments.

So yes, knowing those photos came from people, indeed matters to me. If we fill our world with media that just replicates what is beautiful or evocative, yes in some matter it comes from me as the beholder, but why do we even desire that?

Always the process of making things matters so much to me. Knowing that the creator of the plastic bottle image worked with models, and likely manipulated the pixel level of details in the 3 days of editing described just means more that the image itself.

I guess I just don’t want to work or create in this way. But that’s just me.

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I think the way that I would say it in a way that might be appreciated is that the objects, as objects, don’t really have any value any more, because they can always be produced by an AI

We’re still trying to generate the artist (the photographer, the writer, the musician) for what they produce. The same with students; we’re assessing them based on what they produce. But we’re wrong in this.

What matters isn’t the object, it’s the experience. The experience is created partially by connection, partially by empathy, partially by the moment. The AI can’t produce this, not because they aren’t human, but because they aren’t us.

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