{"id":112695,"date":"2018-09-04T13:40:56","date_gmt":"2018-09-04T20:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/?p=112695"},"modified":"2018-09-04T13:40:56","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T20:40:56","slug":"machine-learning-for-photographers-image-tracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/04\/machine-learning-for-photographers-image-tracking\/","title":{"rendered":"Machine Learning for Photographers: Image Tracking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Basic idea: as a photographer, if you’re shooting street photography<\/a> (or photographing anything that is moving), you are tracking the movement of the subject. The movement of the subject moving towards you, away from you, or in different directions. But how can we apply this machine learning concept of ‘image tracking’ to our photography? Some ideas:<\/p>\n

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Learn to see like a machine<\/h2>\n

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The first time I saw this animation from the slides from the UC Berkeley CS 280 (Computer Vision) course<\/a>, I was blown away (also see the more extended, 2015 course here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Basically I see a brave new world in photography<\/a> in which your phone camera will have “AI (artificial intelligence) assistants” — that will assist<\/em> or coach you in composing better photos.<\/p>\n

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For example, imagine this:<\/p>\n

\n You see an interesting scene, and you can (in real time) see your subject abstracted into a 3D model, and the distracting background is photoshopped out.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This will allow you to better figure out how to pose your subject, from what angle to shoot, and when<\/em> to take the photo (timing).<\/p>\n

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Machine Learning \/ Deep Learning Technologies<\/h2>\n

\"machine<\/p>\n

Right now in Silicon Valley, AI, machine learning, deep learning is the hot stuff. Basically the question that a lot of researchers are trying to address is:<\/p>\n

\n How can we best leverage technology to live better lives?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately a lot of tech folks are nerds who are more obsessed with trying to create a ‘sentinent’ god-like AI that will make humans superfluous. Fortunately my buddy Elon Musk<\/a> (and others) are pushing against<\/em> the dwarfing of humans, by creating organizations such as OPEN AI<\/a> to figure out how to best use artificial intelligence in a meaningful way that actually helps<\/em> humans.<\/p>\n

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How can machine learning\/ai help me as a photographer?<\/h2>\n
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Anyways for myself as a photographer, I’m interested how we can best use\/leverage ai, machine learning, deep learning, etc to improve ourselves as photographers. To make better compositions<\/a> and images. Ultimately the point is to Crete a ‘centaur’ — a photographer who uses artificial intelligence<\/a> to assist<\/em> them in making better photographs. The point isn’t to make photographers irrelevant.<\/p>\n

And one of the pillar-concepts which are helpful is ‘image tracking<\/strong>‘.<\/p>\n

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The future is already here<\/h2>\n

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The cool thing is that we already<\/em> have technology in our phones and digital cameras which have image-tracking built in. For example when I shoot in “intelligent auto” mode on my Lumix G9<\/a>, I get these little yellow ‘tracking boxes’ which assist me with autofocus, and also to just track my subject.<\/p>\n

As a photographer, you can use this technology to track moving objects, cars, or trains:<\/p>\n