For more than three decades, Andreas Smetana has been creating images at the intersection of craft, instinct and commercial creativity. From film to digital, CGI and now AI, his career has evolved alongside the industry itself. Here, he reflects on the risks, reinventions and creative choices that shaped his path, and on why trust, originality and a human point of view still matter more than ever. 

What first made you want to become a photographer, and do you remember the moment when it started to feel like a real career?

I remember being given an old Pentax when I was a very young kid. I started clicking around with it and found the whole thing absolutely fascinating.

I began an apprenticeship when I was 16, then started assisting and eventually opened my own studio in Austria when I was 23. Apart from a couple of holiday jobs when I was very young, I’ve really never done anything else other than shooting pretty pictures. Photography started as a complete passion for me.

Starting my own studio that young definitely had its downsides, but I was also lucky enough to get some quite good jobs with very good clients early on. That was probably the first time I thought, okay, there is actually a career and a life to be made out of this.

But what I loved most were the people. I met some great people in the industry, made very good friends and loved the whole creative world around our industry.

What was the biggest risk you took early in your career, and did it pay off?

The biggest risk was probably starting my own studio when I was only 23. I had no money, not much idea what I was doing and probably not a huge amount of technical ability either, but I had a lot of heart.

At the time, I was lucky to be surrounded by some really great photographers, particularly Gerhard Merzeder, who had a big influence on me and helped shape my career, both as a shooter and as a man.

Starting that young meant I made pretty much every mistake there was to make, probably twice. But I also had the time to learn from those mistakes. Looking back, that was incredibly valuable and absolutely paid off over the years.

Looking back at your first professional work, what would your younger self be most surprised by today?

I think my younger self would be surprised by the amount of life I’ve had through photography.

It’s a tough business, but it has allowed me to travel, work on some amazing projects, meet a lot of great people and make some very good friends along the way.

And, God forbid we talk about money, but it also paid off financially. I certainly wouldn’t have expected that when I was starting out.

More than anything, I think I’d be surprised by where photography took me. It allowed me to live a genuinely exciting life.

You have worked in the industry for more than 30 years. Which project changed the direction of your career the most?

I don’t think there was one particular project that changed the direction of my career. If anything, my career has been about constantly changing and reinventing myself.

When I was young, I did a lot of black-and-white work. Then I became heavily involved in cross-processing, processing slide film as negative film, which gave you these crazy colours, contrast and a really unique print. Then I moved to Sydney and the work changed again.

I remember when I was about 35, a creative director who is still a friend of mine said, “I’m so glad you’ve made a comeback.” I started laughing because, as far as I was concerned, I’d never gone anywhere. Apparently, the industry had decided otherwise.

It was quite funny, but it also taught me something. This business moves incredibly quickly, and you have to keep evolving with it without losing who you are.

So rather than one project, I think what really shaped my career was the freedom we had in photography at the time. You might be given a hand-drawn layout, and then you built the photograph from there. There was room to interpret it, experiment and actually create something.

That freedom suited me. It allowed me to work with instinct, heart and passion, and probably taught me not to get stuck doing one particular kind of photography. Looking back, I think that shaped the direction of my career far more than any single project ever did.

Has there ever been a point when you considered leaving photography or doing something completely different?

That’s a great question, and quite a personal one.

The very fast answer is yes. I always say to friends and clients, I love being a photographer, but sometimes I hate it. But, and that’s a big but, I have never, ever been bored.

Looking back after doing this for more than 30 years, I have to admit it can be a very stressful job. Probably more stressful than people imagine. I don’t want to complain because, frankly, I love being able to create. It really is a wonderful job.

But you’re dealing with abstracts, ideas, opinions, taste, creativity, expectations and, very often, enormous time pressure. So yes, there have definitely been moments when I nearly lost my passion for the business.

I don’t mean that negatively. It’s simply the most honest answer I can give after more than 30 years in the industry. And I’m a fairly simple, honest kind of guy.

Having said all of that, I don’t think I’ll ever leave photography. I love it.

Which project changed the way you understood your own work?

Again, there wasn’t one specific project. It was more a period in my career, probably 10 or 15 years ago, that made me understand my own work much better.

There was a real playfulness in advertising, particularly in Australia. The work could be humorous, extreme and, more often than not, politically incorrect. But there was a freedom to it. You were trusted to make creative decisions, and if you understood the idea and could run with it, you could really shine.

That period made me understand something quite fundamental about myself. Photography and directing are creative processes. Of course, it’s a business, and I completely understand that, but the business ultimately still needs creative work.

There are more layers involved in decisions now, and sometimes that can make the work more predictable. But when a strong idea, the right people and a little trust come together, great work is still absolutely possible.

Give me a strong idea and some freedom to interpret it, and that’s when I think I do my best work. That period taught me more about myself as a photographer than any single project ever did.

How do you handle creative disagreements with clients or agencies?

I don’t really see creative disagreements as disagreements. I see them as discussions. Everyone is trying to get to the best possible piece of work, but naturally, people have different opinions and tastes.

I sometimes joke that I’m a bit like a vampire. You have to invite me into the house before I can come in. The funny thing is, if you’ve hired me to shoot the job, I assume I’ve already been invited in.

If you ask for my creative opinion, I’ll give it to you very openly, and I’ll fight quite strongly for what I believe will make the work better. But ultimately, it’s not my house.

Sometimes you’re invited in and then told exactly where to stand. Even something as fundamental as casting can involve so many people that eventually it becomes a group decision.

If a client knows exactly what they want and simply wants me to execute it, I’m perfectly capable of doing that. I just don’t necessarily believe that’s how the most interesting work gets made.

For me, the strongest work comes from trust. If you invite creative people into the room, you have to give them enough space to actually contribute something.

How do you think AI will change photography and creativity?

The easy answer is yes. AI is fundamentally changing photography and creativity. To me, it is almost like a post-production process that begins before we have even created anything. That is where the fundamental shift starts.

With photography, you bring all the ingredients together: the idea, the set, the location, the lighting, the talent and the people. Then you walk into a space and, hopefully, leave enough room for creativity, interpretation and accidents. Something happens in front of you, you capture it, and then you take it into post-production.

AI reverses that process. You start with a thought, generate hundreds of images, choose one and continue refining it. In a strange way, you can begin producing images before you’ve fully worked out what you are trying to say. It can absolutely be creative, but it is a completely different creative process, with less space for something unexpected or organic to happen.

I’ve always been a big fan of technology. In one career, I’ve gone from shooting on 8x10 film cameras through digital, retouching, CGI and 3D, and now into AI. I’ve done a substantial AI course myself, I use it quite a bit, and as a tool, I think it is extraordinary.

AI can create incredible images, including things that would be physically impossible to photograph. So this isn’t an argument about quality or capability. AI can give you something impressive almost every time, sometimes something genuinely amazing. But impressive isn’t always the same as memorable.

A truly great photograph can stop you in your tracks because it carries somebody’s perspective. It has a realness and believability that you can somehow feel.

You can already see the creative process changing in meetings. Someone generates an AI image to explain an idea, and suddenly that image becomes the reference. The job then becomes recreating something that already exists, before the photographer, director, talent or anyone else has had the opportunity to bring something new to it.

Don’t get me wrong, not all of my advertising work is truly creative either. That’s the reality of commercial work. But advertising photography had already lost something in its process before AI came along. More decisions have gradually been taken out of the photographer’s hands and shaped by whatever everybody can agree on. In-house post-production can then flatten out the differences and make everything feel quite similar.

That doesn’t mean great work is no longer being made. It absolutely is. But it can be difficult to create something genuinely distinctive when so many people are trying to make it safe.

My hope is that advertising becomes more organic and personal again. Not for my own gain, but because if advertising doesn’t connect with people, I’m not quite sure why we are making it.

In the same way that young people have rediscovered vinyl, I think the next generation will increasingly value images that feel human and carry a genuine point of view. AI may even help photography rediscover what makes it special: real people, real moments and individual perspectives.

I don’t believe real photography will disappear. I think it may become more valuable precisely because there will be less of it. In the long run, I still believe creativity wins.

If you could reshoot one campaign from your career today, which would it be and what would you do differently?

That’s a difficult one because I don’t look back at a particular campaign and think I would shoot it differently. Other than the fact that I would probably shoot almost all of my work differently now.

I actually look back at my work quite sentimentally. I’ve been incredibly lucky with the sheer amount of work I’ve been able to do. I’ve shot some very good campaigns and, of course, plenty of not-so-good ones too.

What I would change isn’t necessarily the photograph. It’s the circumstances in which we make it.

Photography has always meant working under time constraints and often in difficult situations. Today, there are simply more people involved in watching, discussing and making decisions.

I hate using the word dictatorship, but I do think creativity needs clear authorship. Somebody ultimately needs to be trusted to make a decision. Creative work can’t always be a group discussion where everybody adds an opinion, because eventually you sand all the edges off.

If I could change one thing about my own work, I probably would have worked much more with daylight. Looking back, I think some of my strongest work came from allowing natural light to do the heavy lifting. But budgets, timing and the realities of advertising often didn’t allow that. Daylight is inherently more risky, whereas in a studio you have much more control.

So I wouldn’t necessarily reshoot one particular campaign. I’d love to revisit some of them with more time, fewer voices, more daylight and a little more trust in the people who were actually there to make the work.

After all these years, what still excites you about photography?

The medium itself. I think photography is an incredibly powerful and underrated medium.

If I’m completely honest, advertising photography excites me some days more than others at the moment. There are still extraordinary campaigns being made, particularly at the very top end, but there simply aren’t that many of them around right now.

But photography itself still excites me enormously.

We live in a world where everything flashes, moves and competes for attention. Every advertisement can look like a million-dollar Hollywood movie. Against all of that, I think there is something incredibly powerful about one still image that is strong enough to make you stop and look.

I’m also genuinely excited about where technology can take photography. I’m not a massive fan of AI replacing photography, but I’m a huge fan of AI as a post-production tool. Used that way, I think it can be extraordinary. It gives photographers tools we could only have dreamed about a few years ago without necessarily replacing the thing that made the photograph interesting in the first place.

Strangely, I’m quite optimistic about where photography might go next. I think advertising photography will have to find its way back to being more creative and more photographic. At the moment, we’re in this slightly strange place where everything can be pre-visualised, generated, retouched and controlled before we even pick up a camera. I’m not convinced that is always producing better work.

I think there will be a reaction to that. More real photography, more individual voices, more accidents, more humanity and, hopefully, a little more trust in the person behind the camera.

Commercially, photography may have some difficult years ahead of it. But creatively, I think the next chapter could be really interesting.

Advertising photography excites me some days more than others. Photography itself still excites me every day.

How do you think your membership with Production Paradise compares to other marketing or directory platforms you’ve used?

I think Production Paradise has been one of the more stable and consistent platforms in our industry. It’s been around for a long time, just like me, it has a strong international presence, and people in the industry know about it.

Particularly at the moment, with the advertising industry changing so much, I think it’s more important than ever to stay visible and keep your work out there. There is probably less money being spent flying photographers around the world than there once was, which I personally miss, but this is not about me...

So for me, Production Paradise has remained a good way of maintaining that international visibility and staying connected to the wider industry.

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A big thank you to Andreas Smetana for sharing his experiences, insights and refreshingly candid perspective on photography, creativity and the industry today. View his member page to see more.

If you enjoyed this interview, discover more stories from our talented members here.

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