She declared 2026 “The Age of Analog” in a video. She has an “analog bag,” which is a canvas tote full of craft supplies she takes out instead of her phone, and she'll show you exactly what's in it, in a reel, with a trending sound. Her journal has a $150 cover and has been photographed in golden hour more times than I've had hot dinners. Hobonichi, the Japanese planner brand, has been mentioned more than 1.5 million times on Instagram.

She's selling something, too, even when she isn't. That Chicago stationery shop with the 45-minute sell-out has a 40-person staff that includes a social media content team, and its co-owner calls social media “by far the most important driver” of customers through the door. One creator in the same story only started journaling because she saw a Hobonichi on TikTok.

So yes, there's a performance going on. Of course there is. You can't announce to your followers that you're spending less time online without spotting the joke.

But here's where I land, and you're welcome to fight me on it. Posting about something doesn't make it fake. I post my journal pages. I'm a photographer. If something's beautiful I'm going to point a camera at it, and I'll probably tell you about it afterwards.

The test for me is whether you'd still do it if the post got four likes and one of them was your mum. The Analog Influencer's bag only exists if it's filmed. My journal is mostly lists, crossings-out and handwriting I can't read the next morning, and nobody will ever see 95% of it. I'd still write in it on a desert island. I'd photograph it too, if I could find one bit of decent light.

Getty Images emailed me today to tell me it's going bankrupt, and that I'm not to worry about it.

It's the corporate version of a man ringing to say he's moving back in with his mum, but the relationship is absolutely fine. Business as usual, they said. Keep uploading, the royalties will keep coming, nothing to see here.

I've spent more than two decades in this industry, and for most of them Getty has been its grand dame: the archive, the gallery on Eastcastle Street, the photo of every red carpet you've ever seen. So I couldn't help but wonder…

When everyone has millions of images at their fingertips, what's a stock photo actually worth? And is uploading to stock libraries still worth a photographer's time?

AI has done to content exactly what digital did to photography. Nearly half of UK small businesses now use AI tools, more than double a year earlier, and making content is the main thing they use them for. Among UK businesses using AI in their marketing, 83% are using the very same tool. So when Gaz says he can do it himself, he's right. Course he can. Weekend Canon Man could take a photo, too.

Photographers have already lived through the next bit. The kit stopped being the reason anyone hired us. The good ones survived on taste, and on knowing which twelve seconds of a wedding actually mattered. The ones whose whole pitch was "I own a better camera than you" are probably selling insurance now.

Has AI replaced social media managers?

Now, before your first coffee has had the decency to cool, you can ask AI for 30 social media ideas, write the captions, generate the images, make a video, remove the background, write a blog, turn the blog into a LinkedIn post, turn the LinkedIn post into seven Instagram posts, and probably commission a jaunty little song about your quarterly sales figures.

Marketing has never been so easy to get into bed with.

And I think that's brilliant. I use AI. A lot. We're not exclusive, but we're definitely seeing each other.

But lately, sitting at my laptop and staring out of the window, I couldn't help but wonder…

If everyone can create content, what makes yours worth consuming?