Learning Loss in the Age of AI A Photographer's Reflection

We are standing at a curious crossroads—a place where machine intelligence is rewriting the creative rulebook.

- By Virendra Shekhawat

As someone who has spent the better part of my life nurturing photographers at the Delhi Photography Club, I've come to both admire and question the power that artificial intelligence now holds over our craft. On the surface, we are in a golden age of convenience and capability. But beneath the glossy façade lies an emerging crisis of cognition—a kind of cultivated dumbness, masked by digital brilliance.

This, to me, is the true learning loss of our time.

AI has brought photography to the masses in ways we once only dreamed of. A beginner can now create images that rival professionals, not by learning the camera, but by outsourcing the very act of seeing to algorithms. Composition is handled. Lighting corrected. Style simulated. The photograph—once a slow, mindful negotiation between the eye, the brain, and the heart—has become a one-click affair.