To AI or Not to AI (Plus Examples)

Thoughts from a Professional Photographer: Yes, I Use AI (But Here's the Truth)

Let’s get real: I’m not going to lie and pretend I don’t use AI. Of course I do. I’m a full-time professional photographer and a full-time human being — with rent to pay, clients to serve, photos to edit, logos to design, and the occasional need to, you know, sleep.

So yeah, ChatGPT and Adobe help me out. It’s not replacing me. It’s helping me survive.

I can already hear some critics whispering, “Well, you didn’t used to need AI to function, so why now?”

Let’s unpack that.

Back then, I had one job. It paid well. Freelance was something I did for extra cash — for travel, tattoos, maybe a fancy date or a new outfit. Fast forward to now: I’m married, my partner and I both work multiple jobs, and despite the fact that our rent is below the state average (so don’t come at me with ‘just move’), we’re still barely scraping by. Most of our income goes to taxes, rent, and staying alive. I haven’t splurged on myself, in a big way, in two years. Yes, I still treat myself to coffee or avocado toast now and then — but I promise that’s not what’s breaking the bank.

Why AI Is a Tool, Not a Shortcut

For creatives like me — photographers, freelancers, small business owners — AI is just that: a tool. A really helpful one.

Take this blog post: I wrote the whole thing, from start to finish, with all of my messy brain ranting and personal thoughts. Then I ran it through ChatGPT to add high-ranking SEO keywords so people can actually find it, and to restructure the legibility because I have ADHD and spend way too much time writing sentences (inside parentheses, because that’s how my brain works), and not everyone can follow the way I write, and I want my blog to do well so my business does well, and I like being able to afford groceries. Because otherwise, what’s the point?

Here’s today’s agenda, in case you're wondering:

• 3 meetings
• Rebuilding a textbook (yep, really)
• Emails, Clickup, being present on Slack (all for work)
• Creating a social media post or two or three
• Leaving job #1 early to start job #2, photographing a 2-hour engagement photo shoot
• Uploading, culling, and batch-processing those images (no edits, just processing)
• Editing a previous couple's engagement session
• Hopefully getting through 100+ more wedding images (yay Corinne+ Henri!)
• Then working on a logo design until around 1am



Tomorrow? Rinse and repeat. Oh — and I average about 6 hours of sleep a night. Because, yes, I do have that much work.

This is why time-saving AI tools are helpful for creatives like me. Because I can’t manufacture more hours in the day.

AI Doesn’t Replace Me — It Supports Me

Let’s be clear: AI doesn’t eliminate the need for professional photographers. It doesn’t end creative industries. It doesn’t stop the value of human-made art.

But corporations are acting like it does.

Did you know that plenty of creative professionals report less demand for their work as AI is on the rise? And while the rest of us try to figure out how to make AI work with us, we also have to face the fact that it’s not all sunshine and saved hours.

AI, just like fast fashion, gas-powered cars, meat production, or streaming — is environmentally harmful. It takes a huge amount of energy to run generative models. And that’s not even getting into the ethical concerns.

Platforms like Etsy are already drowning in AI-generated “copycat” designs — people using generative tools to mimic the style of actual artists and selling the rip-offs for profit. Meanwhile, authors are now competing against AI-written novels built from formulas mimicking top-selling fantasy books, slapping on a viral TikTok-worthy cover, and suddenly becoming bestsellers overnight.

It’s frustrating. It’s exploitative. And it's happening now.

And the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m using AI to help add SEO and restructure my words for legibility — especially when my own mother is a freelance editor with a master’s in creative writing. Most of my friends and family are working artists and freelancers. So believe me, I get the discomfort some people feel when creatives lean on tools like this to save time and money — especially while asking others to support their “expensive art businesses.”

Here’s the thing: would I love to hire a human editor to optimize everything I write? Absolutely. But that requires finding someone (on Fiverr, Thumbtack, or hell - even my mother), making room in my budget, building that cost into my business plan (alongside ads, subscriptions, and software), having conversations with my partner about what else we’d need to cut to afford it, coordinating deadlines, turnaround times, payments, etc. It’s not just money — it’s time, planning, and mental bandwidth.

But here’s the real kicker: People like my mother and I are not billion-dollar corporations gutting creative departments to cut costs. I’m one person — trying to make art and survive. To shame me, or other small artists and business owners, for using AI in small, practical ways is like yelling at a local organic farmer for wasting water — while ordering pepperoni pizza from Domino’s on a Friday night. The nuance, the scale, the context — all of it matters.

Comparison & Analysis

Let’s break down the reality of AI in photography in my workflow (images above)

1) The original RAW file. You’ll see Oliver running off to the side after fluffing the dress and the colors not quite giving that autumn glow.

2) My final edit that I gave to the clients. I used Adobe’s AI tool to remove Oliver and refine the skirt. Then I layered in a blurry leaf overlay I purchased from an artist on Etsy. Adjusted the coloring manually (no 1-click filters here). And cleaned up branches with the clone stamp.

3) What full AI did when I asked it to do the same job from the original photo.

4) A close-up example of just how not real the AI-generated version is.

So when I, a real working artist, say I support using AI as a tool, this is what I mean.

Could I have done all of this by hand? Yes. Clone-stamped the trees and painted over the person pixel by pixel. But would it be sustainable to take on the number of clients I do and deliver high-quality, creative edits on a realistic timeline—without using the AI-powered tools Adobe now offers? No.

AI didn’t replace me. It just saved me time. Taking a 2 hour edit, and letting me finish in under an hour.

What Creatives Actually Need

What we need isn’t no AI — we need smarter, more ethical use of it. We need laws. We need copyright protections to evolve. We need regulations that require tools like ChatGPT or Midjourney to confirm that they aren’t training on stolen words or artwork. It would also be neat if we found a way to cool the servers with a system that used renewable energy and not massive amounts of water — but I digress.

We need guardrails — so that AI doesn’t become a machine of theft but rather a filter to help detect and eliminate plagiarism and exploitation in the creative world.

So while yes — I can now easily edit out someone’s foot from under a dress and extend the fabric with AI in minutes (a task that used to take hours of pixel-by-pixel patching), let’s not forget:

• I still drove to the shoot
• I posed the couple
• I chose the lighting, the settings, the composition
• I edited every final image with intention and skill
• I paid for the ads that showcased MY WORK for them to find me and book my services
• I paid (am still paying) for the education that taught me those skills
• I own all my own gear, rent gear if I need to
• Pay for all the programs needed to edit, store and deliver photos to clients
• and I'm DAMN GOOD AT IT

I’ve been doing this for over a decade. And I deserve to be paid, credited, and respected for the work I actually do.

Just like the illustrator who’s been drawing frogs for 15 years deserves protection from someone using AI to mimic their style to make bird stickers for a quick buck.

Just like the writer whose words were scraped for training data without consent.

Just like the entire creative industry that still powers how things look, feel, connect, and sell.

Creatives still matter. AI might be changing the process — but it doesn’t change the value of our work.