Well this is a larger topic that I’ll touch on in an upcoming podcast, and most people will have no idea wtf I am talking about, but that’s okay, because you’ll perhaps enjoy the art anyway. The TL;DR is that when you are experiencing a DMT rush, either via Ayahuasca or Changa, you often encounter and interact with entities. Weird, right? That doesn’t even begin to explain it.

Anyhoo, the entities by and large are female. They are sometimes insectoid or alien-like. Some are “Machine Elves” (which inspired my Machine Elf fractal creations). I get a lot of “jesters” or clowns, which only happens about 6% of the time according to this scientific study. See, I’m not crazy. Or am I? I’ll ask the entities next time.

Also, if you didn’t click that 6% link above – I HIGHLY recommend it. You may be skeptical, but scroll down and read some of the commonality of experiences.

What do you “chat” about with these entities, you wonder? Well, whatever you want! It’s mostly them appearing and talking to you telepathically. They’ll often tell you things you’re clearly doing wrong in your life, help you solve problems, or sometimes they just fuck around with you and have fun. It can be jarring to some people, especially if you’re kind of a high-anxiety person with a lot of fear in your life. But that is not me. I do have the jester/clowns goof around a lot with me which can be hilarious. Overall, though, you get a message that is very serene as they tell you, “Everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be.” I suppose that is reassuring as a clown is laughing in your face with cartoon fangs.

Before I share these new AI creations, perhaps you’d like to see some of my recent AI thematic creations. Enjoy!

– 60 Stills from a Wes Anderson Sci-Fi Film That Doesn’t Exist
– 32 Nonexistent People At Burning Man
– 27 Tribes From Remote Villages In Papua New Guinea That No One Has Ever Seen
– 31 Burning Man art installations at Burning Man that do not exist

BTW, I started up a new AI Instagram @Trairatcliff account so I could keep my main Instagram more with traditional photography. Be one of the first to join! And tell your friends, but only the cool ones… not the energy vampire friends you are trying to get rid of.

Sample Prompt

I’m using Midjourney version 4 for these (recently upgraded with new aspect ratios – yay!), although I play with all the AI tools. It’s a command-line interface via Discord to communicate with the AI:

“A symmetrical unexpected female Indian goddess entity I encountered on DMT, full body, DMT-inspired psychedelic background –v 4 –ar 2:3”

These images below are mostly entities I’ve seen or slight inspirations thereof. Dude, it’s really hard to describe. If you’ve been in here with me, I can tell you are smiling right now.. Well, grab your popcorn and enjoy the trip!

Here’s a quick and fun review of Luminar Neo! You can use the code TREY10 to get $10 off the yearly or lifetime plans. For those of you who are existing Aurora HDR users, that entitles you to grab the HDR extension for Neo with special pricing, depending on the version you have and for some of you that might even mean free! Just be sure to sign up for Neo with the same email you used to register Aurora HDR to get access to the best pricing.

Before we begin, here’s an image I’ve produced with Neo to get you in the mood…

And now on with the review (click here)…

I’ve been having a little too much fun with AI lately. I decided to combine it with my love for Wes Anderson films!

This is another quirky setting. Wes has never done a Science Fiction movie before, so I thought this would be an interesting territory to explore. This is a fun futuristic (and retro) world that is run by adorable Bonobo monkeys as they establish a dominant matriarchy in space.

Most people don’t know about the Bonobos, but it is the only monkey species that is run by females. So, the monkey troupes don’t even fight against one another. It’s usually settled through sex. I stayed away from monkey-orgies in this one (I did think about it), but there are a few other species competing for power in space. Hmmm… which one should Owen Wilson be? How about Ed Norton and Anjelica Houston? I’ve modeled a bunch of different Bonobos and they look really cool… will share those soon.

Anyway, before we get into the “stills” from the film, here are three other recent AI posts that are quite a bit different that you may enjoy.

– 32 Nonexistent People At Burning Man
– 27 Tribes From Remote Villages In Papua New Guinea That No One Has Ever Seen
– 31 Burning Man art installations at Burning Man that do not exist

BTW, I started up a new AI Instagram @Trairatcliff account so I could keep my main Instagram more with traditional photography. Be one of the first to join! And tell your friends, but only the cool ones… not the energy vampire friends you are trying to get rid of.

More about this Wes Anderson Project

I notice in responses on Instagram and Facebook that people are really curious about how I make these. I’ll do a tutorial at some point when I’m not imagining Bill Murray as a beaten-down cuck-monkey, but for now I can give you a little bit of background.

I generated about 1,000 different movie stills using many series of prompts (mostly failing ones) to communicate with the AI. Out of those 1,000, I chose my favorites and upscaled about 60 of them. How long did this whole thing take? Just about a day. I mean, I work really fast and I kind of have this stuff figured out, but it still didn’t take that long at all.

There was difficulty in getting EXACTLY the shots and angles I wanted, but many were close enough. For example, I had trouble getting a bunch of good shots of the spaceships traveling in deep space. I finally kind of ran out of steam around midnight. I’m sure if I had more time I could get them right, but perfection is the enemy of progress. Or something like that. Besides, I’m just playing around and experimenting.

It took about 2-3 hours to generate about a thousand frames and create new AI command combinations to get the sorts of shots I wanted.

End of Traditional Concept Artists?

Errr, well, yes, I suppose. Actually, I see a future where existing concept artists “rough out” a scene then use it as a reference JPG for the AI. And then they can use a series of words (see below) to communicate with the AI to get all sorts of different results. This will be one of the biggest “professions” to be dismantled by AI, which is too bad, because I LOVE good concept artists. I follow so many from Star Wars to LOTR – well – you name it. All hardcore geeks LOVE concept artists. But, you know, what are you gonna do? Sure, maybe AI right now can’t do as good of a job as some of the greats, but it’s pretty goddamned creative and it’s only gonna get better.

Sample Prompt

I’m using Midjourney version 4 for these, although I play with all the AI tools. It’s a command-line interface via Discord to communicate with the AI:

“A Wes Anderson Science Fiction stop-motion film inside a spaceship’s medical bay with characters as cute bonobo monkeys + 40mm anamorphic + cinematic shot + symmetry + tonal colors + cross-processing + childish friendly feel + the feel of a dollhouse feel + soothing + playful –ar: 2:1”

Well, grab your popcorn and enjoy the movie!

I’ve been having a little too much fun with AI lately. I decided to combine it with my love for Wes Anderson films!

This is another quirky setting. Wes has never done a Science Fiction movie before, so I thought this would be an interesting territory to explore. This is a fun futuristic (and retro) world that is run by adorable Bonobo monkeys as they establish a dominant matriarchy in space.

Most people don’t know about the Bonobos, but it is the only monkey species that is run by females. So, the monkey troupes don’t even fight against one another. It’s usually settled through sex. I stayed away from monkey-orgies in this one (but I did think about it), but there are a few other species competing for power in space. Hmmm… which one should Owen Wilson be? How about Ed Norton and Anjelica Houston? I’ve modeled a bunch of different Bonobos and they look really cool… will share those soon.

Anyway, before we get into the “stills” from the film, here are three other recent AI posts that are quite a bit different that you may enjoy.

– 32 Nonexistent People At Burning Man
– 27 Tribes From Remote Villages In Papua New Guinea That No One Has Ever Seen
– 31 Burning Man art installations at Burning Man that do not exist

BTW, I started up a new AI Instagram @Trairatcliff account so I could keep my main Instagram more with traditional photography. Be one of the first to join! And tell your friends, but only the cool ones… not the energy vampire friends you are trying to get rid of.

More about this Wes Anderson Project

I notice in responses on Instagram and Facebook that people are really curious about how I make these. I’ll do a tutorial at some point when I’m not imagining Bill Murray as a beaten-down cuck-monkey, but for now I can give you a little bit of background.

I generated about 1,000 different movie stills using many series of prompts (mostly failing ones) to communicate with the AI. Out of those 1,000, I chose my favorites and upscaled about 60 of them. How long did this whole thing take? Just about a day. I mean, I work really fast and I kind of have this stuff figured out, but it still didn’t take that long at all.

There was difficulty in getting EXACTLY the shots and angles I wanted, but many were close enough. For example, I had trouble getting a bunch of good shots of the spaceships traveling in deep space. I finally kind of ran out of steam around midnight. I’m sure if I had more time I could get them right, but perfection is the enemy of progress. Or something like that. Besides, I’m just playing around and experimenting.

It took about 2-3 hours to generate about a thousand frames and create new AI command combinations to get the sorts of shots I wanted.

End of Traditional Concept Artists?

Errr, well, yes, I suppose. Actually, I see a future where existing concept artists “rough out” a scene then use it as a reference JPG for the AI. And then they can use a series of words (see below) to communicate with the AI to get all sorts of different results. This will be one of the biggest “professions” to be dismantled by AI, which is too bad, because I LOVE good concept artists. I follow so many from Star Wars to LOTR – well – you name it. All hardcore geeks LOVE concept artists. But, you know, what are you gonna do? Sure, maybe AI right now can’t do as good of a job as some of the greats, but it’s pretty goddamned creative and it’s only gonna get better.

Sample Prompt

I’m using Midjourney version 4 for these, although I play with all the AI tools. It’s a command-line interface via Discord to communicate with the AI:

“A Wes Anderson Science Fiction stop-motion film inside a spaceship’s medical bay with characters as cute bonobo monkeys + 40mm anamorphic + cinematic shot + symmetry + tonal colors + cross-processing + childish friendly feel + the feel of a dollhouse feel + soothing + playful –ar: 2:1”

Well, grab your popcorn and enjoy the movie!

Grab Them Before They’re Gone Forever.

Here’s a pretty wild offer for you…

I’ve spent a number of years building a massive library of photography presets, video tutorials and eBooks and more which sell for well over $750 if added together. Now, for a short time, you can get all of them in one mega bundle for just $24.99 (the normal-ish price for one preset pack). After a limited time, this will rise to $49.99 and then maybe after that they’ll all disappear from the store forever. So get them while you can!

As always I’ll be throwing in my RAW files with the tutorials so you can follow along and also bundled in there are things like my high-res textures which you can use as you please for post-processing. Maybe you’ll find a few surprises in there too. So, check out the link for a detailed rundown of the contents before they disappear forever.

Grab Them Before They’re Gone Forever.

Here’s a pretty wild offer for you…

I’ve spent a number of years building a massive library of photography presets, video tutorials and eBooks and more which sell for well over $750 if added together. Now, for a short time, you can get all of them in one mega bundle for just $24.99 (the normal-ish price for one preset pack). After a limited time, this will rise to $49.99 and then maybe after that they’ll all disappear from the store forever. So get them while you can!

As always I’ll be throwing in my RAW files with the tutorials so you can follow along and also bundled in there are things like my high-res textures which you can use as you please for post-processing. Maybe you’ll find a few surprises in there too. So, check out the link for a detailed rundown of the contents before they disappear forever.

Well, I’ve been going a little crazy with this unusual form of “photography” where I sit behind a computer without a lens rather than a computer with a lens. I’ve always thought about my high-end cameras as computers that just happen to have a lens attached. Most of the smarts are inside the camera, and most of the “visions” of the photo come from my mind. The only shortcoming to that is I actually have to get my body to a location in a time and place to make it happen. Please note I still love regular photography, and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. But I do quite like the idea of just visualizing very interesting images and communicating with an artificial intelligence to describe the kind of shot I’d like to see.

I went through a similar thought process when I started drone photography. I was basically holding a computer in my hands with a screen, and I would tell the drone where to go. The lens did not have to be a few inches from my head. That opened up a 180 degree hemisphere of 2-4km around me where I could take almost any photo I wanted. Now, with AI, it’s kind of the next-level, where the lens is actually inside the computer.

I’m a very visual person (in my head too), so I spent a long time doing a “dance” with an AI so that we could understand one another better. There have been many failures, but here are some of the successes. I recently did two other posts:

– 31 Burning Man art installations at Burning Man that do not exist
– 27 Tribes From Remote Villages In Papua New Guinea That No One Has Ever Seen

BTW, I started up a new AI Instagram @Trairatcliff account so I could keep my main Instagram more with traditional photography. Be one of the first to join! And tell your friends, but only the cool ones… not the energy vampire friends you are trying to get rid of.

After those initial mini-projects, mentioned in the post above, I am finally figuring out how to get realistic-looking people at Burning Man wearing rather amazing costumes.

I’m using Midjourney version 4 for these, although I play with all the AI tools. It’s a command-line interface via Discord to communicate with the AI. Here is a sample query for one of the photos. If you haven’t used Discord, this will look confusing. Even if you are an expert at Discord (like me!), well, it still takes a while to get the hang of it. I should make a tutorial or something. Anyway, here is the sample query:

And here are 32 of my favorite creations so far. Note that some of the costumes are a bit over the top, but I kinda like that. I did photos in all sorts of different weather situations, day, night, males, females, many moods and temperatures. It was great fun to experiment with. Enjoy!

Follow my new @TraiRatcliff Instagram here!

This is the second in a series of mind-bending imagery, all created by an AI I’ve been working with. The first article explored art installations at Burning Man that do not exist and talks a little about how artists can team up with AIs in fun, inspiring, and innovative ways.

I went to Papua New Guinea several years ago and I was so amazed by seeing so many different types of tribes (see my Original Photos Here). I found their customs and the way they decorated themselves to be mesmerizing. There are still many undiscovered villages in Papua New Guinea as well, so I decided to make that a theme here.

I used some of my images as reference and for many of these queries to the AI, I used “in the style of Trey Ratcliff.” Luckily, because I’ve uploaded so many “people” photos to the internet over the past 15 years, the AI can kind of figure out my style. For these, I did many different switches and adjustments on the types of images. Male to female, age 8 to 80 to see all the variations. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I did creating them!