PapaBearded AI, who also goes by PapaBearded or Tom, is a bird photographer from the Boston areawho incorporates AI, film and digital landscape photography into his work.He began minting NFTs on Tezos in April 2021, which quickly became his favorite platform to create on, and started minting on Solana on January 2, 2022.
A collector as well as a creator, he bought Claire Silver's first NFT in 2021, and she bought his. He has helped lead the Photez community.
His project Flocksourced is a community-curated collection of his bird photography in which followers vote on Twitter for which images he mints into the series. It began on Ethereum via OpenSea in August 2021, moved onto a custom Manifold contract by February 2022, and expanded to ExchangeArt and Solana in 2024.He has also used AI on bird photography for Life List of an AI Birder, daily Tezos editions offering an AI-reworked image for every bird species he has personally seen.pbArbitraryAI, a randomly generated collection, drew a run of nearly 200 mints on Tezos between May and June 2023.
His collage project Moseics blends original bird photography with AI, with each 32-image season including composite pieces made from the previous three;#PapaBirded similarly superimposes his bird photography onto collaborating artists' work using AI or double-exposure techniques,and pbCollage, begun in 2024, incorporates his photography alongside public-domain art and pieces by fellow Drip Haus artists used with their permission.Alongside his digital work, he shoots analog photography under the name #PBonFilm, using disposable cameras, a pinhole camera, a 1940s medium-format camera and his late father's 35mm camera.
