Capturing The Unseen
A conversation with photographer and digital artist Anthony Samaniego about his moving dreamscapes.
By Nando Costa on October, 2025
I wanted to talk to him about this evolution, and how it feels to create such highly digitized art at a time when most of the content being produced already feels highly artificial. I hope you enjoy this conversation, and please visit his Instagram for samples of his work with audio.
Your work is deeply atmospheric and dreamlike. What experiences in your early life shaped the way you see and capture these scenes?
At a very early age I would hike around the nearby hills with my parent’s Labrador. These solitary experiences gave me a gratitude towards nature. I discovered skateboarding at an early age, and it became my everything. Los Angeles was a wild place to get lost in.
Thinking back, there were similarities in being out skateboarding and wandering the hills as a child. A sense of exploration mixed with freedom. I skateboarded throughout college and into my post-collegiate job as an analyst for one of the entertainment giants.
After about a year in I was involved in a traumatic accident and broke several bones. I shattered my pelvis and femurs, amongst other bones. To be blunt, I should have died.
There was this period of lost time while I was in the ICU. I wasn’t in a coma, but I was neither there nor here. In my mind I was in a dream-like parallel world. It took me about six months to relearn how to walk again.
During the recovery process I found solace in looking at photos and taking photos. Life is fragile, and being through such a traumatic event has taught me to be aware of the subtleties.
I revisited the hills I wandered as a kid and thought of the space as a studio. With the loss of my artistic outlet (skateboarding) I was able to focus all my energy into art.
That sounds like a difficult time to say the least. I’m happy that you’ve recovered and can share your artistic sensibility with us.
Hearing this story made me see your art in a different light, almost as if the scenes you capture are in fact fleeting moments where the notion of time is warped. Is the idea of time something that you consciously explore in your work?
Thank you. Subtleties tend to take on another meaning after a calamity. I have this infatuation with fleeting moments and the perception of time.
Notions I tend to explore within seamless loops - truly seamless, where there is no end or beginning. I find it an interesting deconstruct of time.
Can you share a moment when you realized photography and digital art were the paths you wanted to pursue?
There was never a specific moment. Photography literally became an obsession, and it was something I was never complacent about. I would shoot two rolls of film every week to push my practice.
I loved experimenting and would get lost in multiple exposures and long exposure photography. Later, 3D became an obsession and the two intertwined.
I can relate. Photography has also been a personal obsession for me recently. Your work has a distinct visual signature. How did you refine your creative process to achieve that?
Wow, thank you. Ha, I would like to think it’s refined, but my desktop says otherwise. To simplify, I’m attracted to certain colors and hues.
That’s sort of guide when I shoot something and in 3D as well. I tend to look at tons of paintings and research color theory. I usually have this genuine feeling when I know something is “there.” The creative process is a journey to reach that feeling.
That’s fascinating. Having grown up in Rio de Janeiro, I’ve always been aware of how local climate and light can influence the perceived color palette of a place. There for instance, the world seems to be immersed in an overly saturated haze.
Would you say that atmosphere and color is what drives your process, or is it the physical, spatial qualities of a place?
Definitely both. I adore coastal weather. There’s something about an early opaque fog I get lost in, as if it’s a liminal space.
In terms of physical qualities, I like to analyze how a structure or space makes me feel…is there a mood present due to the colors, the way the light hits, the minimalism or the excess.
How do you balance digital manipulation with photography? Do you see your work as photography first, or is it more of a hybrid between image-making and digital art?
I see my recent work as encapsulating a memory. Photography is drawing with light. The work expands on the drawing into a digital immersion. We can recall and replay our memories on a loop.
I like to explore this concept as a memory I’m visualizing and directing the viewer through based on an actual location. The result is a true hybrid of photography and digital art. One wouldn’t exist without the other.
What role does improvisation play in your work? Are your images meticulously planned, or do you discover them in the process?
I like to research a place before I arrive. Sometimes I’ll watch YouTube, walk through tours or I’ll scour a vicinity with Google 3D maps, but nine times out of ten, everything is improvised. I usually get a feeling from a place, and I know immediately I have to shoot or scan it.
Does that kind of improvisation extend onto the way you move the camera through a digitized space as well, or is it all more carefully orchestrated?
In a digitized space the camera movements are technically orchestrated. They all seamlessly loop, so there’s quite a bit of math to get the loop precise. Lots of previewing, making sure numbers match up, and double and triple checking data.
I think of the digital process as directing an immersive experience, which contrasts well to a serene shoot.
By capturing real-world locations and re-creating them dimensionally, it seems like you're giving them a sense of permanence to them, even if just for yourself, as if you were assigning a special value to these places.
Is that relationship between you and these places something you think about?
I think of the relationship similar to photography - capturing a moment or mood but also directing the viewer through an experience of the animated space. Taking the space into an immersive form.
Has AI or automation found a place in your creative workflow? If so, how do you integrate it, and what do you think about the increasing role of machine intelligence in art?
I suppose, but I tend to struggle with this idea. I’ll shoot a place/space and then run the photos through software to obtain a point cloud or gaussian splatt.
Technically there is some automation there, but that wouldn’t exist without the photos. Photogrammetry has been around for a long time, so it becomes suspicious when older methods are being repurposed as “AI.”
The simulations in my work are all meticulously done with Houdini. It would be nice to have a one click answer, but the rewards of the process would be lost.
I think the increasing role of machine intelligence has been fueled by the monetization of digital art. Machine learning has been around and really took off during the digital art boom. I think it’s an interesting time, but I’m still waiting for it to push art in an unseen direction, if that is even possible.
Personally, I have experimented with training models and loras. There is a science in training, which is really fun. One of my early experiments was training a lora on my cat and that’s been a lot of fun. In terms of generations, I find it more in line with curating, rather than creating.
There’s a growing conversation about AI-generated art and its place in the creative world. Do you see it as a collaborator, a tool, or a threat?
I think it could be all. It’s important to have an open mind. Can or will it help you, and of most importance, does it make you happy?
In my use cases I see AI as a tool. I try to simplify the use and ask the question: is there art before the use of AI? If not, then there definitely needs to be some regrouping.
Where do you personally draw the line between "art made by a human with digital assistance" and "AI-generated art"? Do you think that distinction will matter in the future?
It’s in the look and feel. I find a lot of AI to be easily recognizable and eerily similar. I don’t think the distinction matters once it’s stylized and unique.
How would you feel if AI were eventually able to re-create a look exactly as another artist? If aesthetics can be replicated, how do we value human craft?
AI can easily re-create an artist’s style and look with the right dataset. We value human craft because AI would not exist without human craft.
any young artists feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of tools available today. If you were starting out now, how would you approach learning, developing your style, and most importantly, a distinct point of view?
If I were starting out now, I would try to go to art school or at least visit nearby museums and research the greats. Truly know their lives and practices. I would also make sure I understand why I like something…not just on the surface level, but the innate reasons why.
To me, a lot of my art stems from experimenting. It’s vital to not be afraid of experimentation. Style comes with time, but aligns well with constant exposure to styles. A distinct point of view comes from being receptive to your feelings.
Well said. Is there a piece of advice you wish you had received when you were starting out?
Start a dream journal.
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