Monthly Archives: August 2026

Remembering Jay Maisel

Photography

Like so many folks in the extended imaging community, I was sad to hear of the passing of Jay Maisel. Though I never got to know him well, Jay was a familiar & colorful presence in the world of Photoshop and Lightroom. See some memorable recollections from Joe McNally.

Many years ago I had the chance to drop by the iconic converted bank building in the Bowery he occupied for nearly half a century. (This must’ve been before phone cameras got good, as otherwise I’d have shot the bejesus out of the place.) It was everything you’d hope it to be.

More recently, my father-in-law (having no idea about the visit) dialed up the documentary “Jay Myself” last night, and whole family (down to my then-12yo budding photographer son) loved it. I think you would, too!

Fun with Omni peech

AI/ML, Google Omni

(plural of pooch: “peech”; same for spouse/speece)

No doods were frightened in the making of this fiery display, made with our Google Omni Flash model:

Nor were any steamed:

Amazing realtime relighting

AI/ML, Photography, Relighting

Wow—provided quality & resolution can be made high enough, tell me how soon tech like this can come to Photoshop & Lightroom:

Getting buff in Yellowstone

AI/ML, Nano Banana, Photography

Given that we’re taking our eldest son to start life as a University of Colorado Buffalo tomorrow (!), it was only fitting that we communed with a few real buffs in Yellowstone over the last few days. Here’s an Insta gallery:

 

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by John Nack (@jnack)

Bonus wildlife from the trip: in Boise we dropped by the The World Center for Birds of Prey and got to see this handsome crew in action. (Inside-baseball detail: hopefully you’d never know that I was obliged to photograph the first owl shown through a dense set of bars on his enclosure. Nano Banana in Photoshop to the rescue!)

Some amazing recent animations

AI/ML, Illustration

It’s a very imperfect analogy, but I feel like as AI video fully passes the “can this pass for real” test, we’ll break into new & more interesting territory—much as painting did once photography took the “does this replicate reality” crown.

Here’s a handful of fun, beautiful animations rendered in a variety of styles. The fact of them being powered by new models is kind of incidental—as it should be: all that matters is what moves people & what helps artists do that.

An AI e-clipse

Photography

Maciej Dobrodziej writes,

Today, a solar eclipse over Poland. The first such one in 72 years. The last time people looked up at the sky like that was in 1954 – through soot-covered glass, on Constitution Square in Warsaw. I froze that moment and flew through it with a camera. All the way to the sun. Zdzisław Wdowiński / PAP, 1954

Taking Nano Banana on the road

AI/ML, Nano Banana, Photography

Greetings from the midst of our bittersweet (but mostly very sweet!) roadtrip to take Finn off to college in Boulder. Me being me, I of course brought our Lego selves to use in making arguably cringey (#jeezdad) family pics. I don’t have a precise match for our newly modded van, so I brought the closest equivalent & then gave Gemini a reference image to use with Nano Banana. Not bad, robot—not bad at all:

Head-spinning photo->3D

3D, AI/ML, Photography

I have no words for this kind of witchcraft. In case the embedded tweet doesn’t show up in English, here’s a translation:

Wow. Maciej Dobrodziej – a digital creator – has “brought to life” one of Warsaw’s most famous photographs. The photo of a girl running in the rain on Puławska Street was taken by Zbigniew Siemaszko in 1968. Fun fact: After many years, it was possible to find Ms. Grażyna, who is the heroine of the photo. She recognized herself upon seeing… the photograph on FB.

Elsewhere, Bytedance helps you explore similarly, specifying camerawork just by drawing lines on an image:

Wait for me, Penelope…

AI/ML

“A.I. sing of arms and the man…” Wait—that was the Aeneid, but Imma go for it.

This reimagining of The Odyssey—nailing everything from casting to an apparently generated period-accurate song that actually slaps—demonstrates my long-running contention that when things become amazing enough, we can’t even process them.

People see this and neither marvel at the incredible state of technology (which has leapt forward in just the last couple of weeks), nor point out little shortcomings here & there, nor even get into another fruitless battle about the ethics of AI. Instead, at least from where I sit, I see them simply commenting on the concept & storytelling.

Which, I think, is how it should & will be.

Put your hands together—literally—for the music of MediaPipe

AI/ML, Body Tracking, Google Omni

It’s so fun to see work from a past life enabling whole new modes of expression!

Taking a different approach to hand tracking & creativity, check out this Omni experiment: