The Company We Keep

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The Company we keep.

We like characters. Big ones. The kind you recognize instantly. And we like dogs. Also, big characters.

So, for this series, we paired three archetypal humans with dogs that don't quite make sense. The kind of relationships that make you look twice and think, wait… how did that happen? That little moment of confusion is where the fun lives.

Everything in the images was built the old-fashioned way: camera, lighting, locations, wardrobe, props, hair, makeup, and a lot of direction. The color is intentional, the light is crafted, and the environments belong to the characters.

The dogs, however, are AI.

After many attempts to generate the exact dogs we wanted, we realized AI works a little like a box of spare parts. One version had the right ears. Another had the right stance. Another had the right attitude. We borrowed elements from multiple generations and composited them until the dog finally appeared as we imagined it.

Then we retouched the details AI still struggles with. For instance, the catchlights in the dogs’ eyes looked suspiciously fake, so we borrowed real catchlights from human portraits and built them into the dogs’ eyes.

It turns out this approach is also far cheaper than hiring a professional dog (who may or may not cooperate that day).

For us, AI isn’t replacing photography: it’s another tool in the kit. It lets us push ideas further, spend less money getting there, and make the kind of images that probably shouldn’t exist.