Dear friends of Les Collines,
If you’ve browsed our website recently, you may have noticed something different. The photos of our individual preserves look… well… a little less perfect. That’s intentional.
Until recently, many of the images on our product pages were generated with AI. They were beautiful—almost suspiciously beautiful. The lighting was flawless, the fruit impossibly glossy, the jars arranged with the kind of precision usually reserved for luxury watches. But something about them didn’t sit quite right. They didn’t feel authentic. And authenticity matters deeply to us.
At Les Collines, we make small-batch preserves because we believe fruit deserves to be honored for what it actually is - complex, seasonal, and sometimes a little unpredictable. A cold, dry summer might produce fruit that’s smaller and more subtle. A warm, rainy season might bring an explosion of flavor and abundance. That variation is the whole point. Nature doesn’t do perfect. Nature does real.
AI images, on the other hand, tend to look like fruit designed by a committee of perfectionists. Too smooth. Too curated. Too artificial. And while AI can do many impressive things, there’s one thing it can’t do: Taste.
It can’t taste a wild blueberry at its peak. It can’t taste a bitter orange mellowed by sugar and time. And it certainly can’t experience the quiet magic of fruit transforming into something extraordinary in a pot on the stove. Only humans can do that. So we decided our photos should reflect the same philosophy as our preserves: honest, seasonal, and made by real hands.
Are the new photos a little less polished? Yes.
Are they a little more real? Also yes.
And that feels much more like us.
In the future, we’ll also make an effort to clearly say when AI has been used. Transparency matters. For example, this email began as my own rather clumsy draft—but since writing isn’t my strongest skill, I asked AI to help refine it so you could actually enjoy reading it. Think of it as using a good editor, not replacing the author. Because at the end of the day, technology is a tool. Craft is the intention behind it. And preserves will always belong to the humans who taste them.
Warmly,
Gian
PS. My kids did their best to help with the photoshoot... you might find one or the other picture on the website where they were involved 😊
PPS. We now offer FREE SHIPPING on all order over $60. That also applies for all subscriptions.
