Potato Prompts, Perspective & Process

If you haven't already noticed, I love browsing stock photography and using what I find to populate my sketchbook. I just love how you can find glamourous images of the most mundane things. Photos of potatoes with lighting that could rival a Vogue cover photoshoot absolutely appeals to my appreciation for good craftsmanship.

The second reason is that it appeals to my never-ending obsession with what's happening in the visual media zeitgeist. There are so many visual styles and subjects being captured. I browse the random catalog using standard prompts and enjoy unexpected results the most. If something sparks my interest it goes into the sketchbook and random musings ensue.

Today, I searched, "lemonade stand" and the image of potatoes stacked on top of each other gave me a giggle. What an odd search result?

Naturally, I sidelined my initial cause and redirected my investigation to finding out why my results delivered a picture of a pile of beige root vegetables instead of lemonade stand signage. The whys and the how's were too challenging to discern for a Friday afternoon. I pivoted to something more fun - use the image of the potatoes, something categorically less visually inspirational (🥔) images to derive some kind of design concept? Sort of like reverse engineering design visioning.

If you follow along the sketchbook entry, you will see both stock photography and AI generated images are featured. Here are some of the results not shown in the sketchbook.

I promise the words "potato" "potatoes" were used in the prompts.

When it comes to the exploring sources of inspiration, it occurred to me that I gravitate toward classically beautiful images that easily appeal to most peoples' visual senses. Stunning landscapes of naturally beautiful vistas, close-up nature shots, and perfectly streamlined modern interiors easily elicit delight that seamlessly translate into other concepts. However, today a photo of a pile of potatoes + my weird sense of humor + access to AI + lack of actual client and deadline, allowed me to explore some ideas based on a pretty ho hum starting point. It was kind of fun, a little irritating, perhaps something I should try to do more often?