Culling With AI - Actual Impact NOT Artificial Intelligence

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When working a game on deadline it's important to have an efficient and effective cull (for those that are just learning photography lingo, that's how you decide which images are "keepers" out of the thousands you might take) that tells the story of the game. I wanted to highlight this by showing a sequence I covered at the San Francisco Giants vs Los Angeles Angels game Saturday to highlight how what AI might think is the right cull, actually is not. Culling for AI, as in Actual Impact not Artificial Intelligence

So for starters, let's think of what we cull for, that AI can handle

Focus
Exposure

But what can AI not account for

Impact

Take for example bases loaded, and Keaton Winn throws ball four to send Jose Siri in for a walk-in run. Now if only I could say "Hey Siri, how should I edit this?"

Puns intended ;)

Anyway - Here's a few of my unedited originals from the sequence to give you an idea of how I make the decision to cull and how I don't think that can be replaced by ai.

Obviously there's the walk from third base, that tells the story and really shows that he is WALKING in.

There's a little further along where he has a little jog and it shows Logan O'Hoppe right behind him, giving a little more sense that he is advancing home to make room for the runner behind him. But you don't see his eyes and it's not so dynamic. (Not to mention it shows the score, that this play really isn't going count for much with the Giants 9-1, now 9-2 lead)

Ok - but I think I want the story of him passing by the pitcher's mound since the run is scored from a walk, and we want to show the "dejected" pitcher.

This one is good, but the flagpoles seem a little distracting, can we do better?

Alright I think I like that one. Foot is planted instead of mid air and the flagpoles are now out of frame.

Well now he's a little too close to Winn

Or completely blocking him

Ok, now Winn is behind him, but Siri is looking too far left and you start to lose his face

And then just nothing from this one except busy background.

So I settle on the one where his foot is planted and he, benefit of it being horizontal but the action is also close enough that an editor could crop it to use vertically. I do a little crop myself to frame composition and make sure my horizon is level (using the flag pole as guidelines)

And these are all the nearly instantaneous decisions that go through my mind in-game while tagging in-camera. AI might be able to tell you which is in focus and whether it is properly exposed (though does it account for the sky being brighter and likely throwing off the histogram?) but it can't yet tell you how to intentionally select your images for impact.

In my game day set, I only sent one because really, outside the story line of Winn not getting the save, there's not much story here. The real story is Jung Hoo Li hitting a three-run home run for his 100th MLB career RBI. And again some thumbnails of the celebration. At this point these should be easy for you.