Most places I go, I take a fair number of photos, because in our time – over the last two decades or so – high-quality photography has become cheap and easy. I took a digital camera on a trip for the first time in 2005 and have ever since, each one making sharper images than the one before, besides an exponential increase in memory. I’d never have the patience to set apertures or figure out film speeds, but point a phone that I use for nothing else? Easy.

Now, suddenly, digital graphic design has became cheap and easy. Is it any good? A lot of AI images look like AI images, the kind of stilted cartoons we all now recognize (well, a lot of us do). But do they have to be?

Earlier this summer, we visited Fabyan Forest Preserve in Geneva, Illinois. Later, I cooked up a series of “postcards” – named for the aspect ratio, since they aren’t real cards – using images I took there. There are a number of advantages to this, the main one being I own the copyright to the images, and so derivative works aren’t an issue. The prompts in this case are “WPA style” or something to that effect. Add some text and there you go.

Promotion-type images for other places I’ve been, recently or not. Again, all the underlying images are mine.

Images for details along the way in Illinois, using a variety of other prompts, exact location not so important.

One more.

Think of it as the first in a fire hydrant series: Van Gogh Fire Hydrant.