Chalet Navauce

The 30 photographs on this page come from two sources: 15 from phone shots taken between 25 May and 17 June 2023 (dates read from the shooting data) and 15 from images previously published online, small (720 to 1,200 pixels on the long side) and without shooting data. 24 of the 30 photographs went through a generative image model (Google's Nano Banana family, used through the Higgsfield platform), in two different ways. In the 10 interior photographs taken with the phone (nos. 11–16, 18, 20–22) and in simulation no. 27 the pixels of the house and of the rooms are those of the original photograph: only the light was taken from the model, applied as a layer over the shot (in no. 27 the sky and the evening light, i.e. the simulated part, also come from the model). In the other 13, small images enlarged up to seven times, the image was reconstructed by the model: the fine detail (wood grain, leaves, flowers, roof tiles, stones, small objects) is plausible, not documentary. Where the model had turned spots of a few pixels into things that are not there (a figure on a tree, a cat and a chair behind a window, a hatch, a lit lantern, a crate with a heart, a drip stain, an ear tag on a sheep) or redrew the solar panels, those areas were replaced with the image from an AI upscaler that does not add objects (Bytedance, through Higgsfield: photos 2, 4, 6 and 10), with the original enlarged without AI (photo 9) or with the same area of the real photograph the simulation comes from (photo 29). There was a single purpose: more light in the interiors, clean daylight in the exteriors, and small images that can be read at full size. Elements were removed from 2 photographs: in no. 20, with the model, two personal objects (a black object resting on the table and a key on the back of a chair); in no. 6, an aerial view, a distant person at the edge of the woods, with a local retouch. All furniture and textiles were deliberately left, as were the lamps as they were (on or off), the pictures, the decorative objects, the flowers, the parasols and terrace furniture, and the materials stacked near the hut in the aerial view. Where an element was removed, what it hid was not photographed: in no. 20 the edge of the tablecloth and the chair back were reconstructed plausibly by the model; in no. 6 the person's place is taken by meadow copied from the area next to it. Nothing else was changed: dimensions, openings, beams, floors, furniture, fences, path, roof and solar panels are as photographed, the views from the windows are the same, the season is the one of the shot (photo 24 is in autumn), and in the real night photograph (no. 26) the stars are the photographed ones: 12 faint dots added by the model were removed. No defects to document were found in the photographs, and none was reduced or hidden: the bare patches in the meadow are as they were. The last four photographs (27–30) are simulations, declared on the image: the same views in a light that was not there (two golden evenings, a sunset, a night with the windows lit). The house, the land, the trees, the fences and the mountains are the same; the light and the sky change, and at night only the four front windows and the existing gable light are lit. The other 6 photographs received only a local light and colour adjustment, without generative AI (two views, nos. 7 and 25, were also enlarged without AI). Light and colour were corrected as in ordinary photo editing. The original unedited photographs can be seen by opening a photo and pressing “See the original”; the visit remains the only reference for the actual condition of the chalet.