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All-In Wedding Photography
The business podcast for wedding photographers who want to build a booking system that works.
If you're tired of feeling stuck and alone in your business, this podcast is for you.
Join wedding photographer Alex Stead with co-host Ren as they break down funnels, marketing, pricing, and business strategies together in a way that actually makes sense.
New episodes every Thursday - hit subscribe so you never miss one!
All-In Wedding Photography
Help! The Robots Want My Camera (How I'm using AI In My Photography Business)
Are you afraid that the robots are going to take your job? Worried about the future as a photographer? You're not alone.
In today's episode we talk about...
- 5 AI tools I'm using in my business to save time and create better results for my clients without losing my creative edge
- The future of photography with the rise of AI
- Tell-tale signs someone's using AI in their social media and how to not fall into the trap of sounding like a robot
- Trends that are in direct opposition to the polished, clean AI artwork that's taking over the feeds
- Why I'm not worried about AI replacing my job, and what happened when I tried to plan a vacation with ChatGPT
Like this podcast? We would LOVE if you subscribed, rated and reviewed! Thanks for being here.
imagine like a picture where it's like you know a really emotional moment where somebody's crying, it's going to say eyes are closed, bad. Yeah, there are five tools that I've integrated into my business in the last year or so, since AI became like pretty popular, and there's something that I just think AI is not going to change. So if you're like afraid of AI, I don't know, maybe this episode will give you a little bit of hopefully a bit of chillness and also maybe some new tools that you can integrate into your business if you're not using any or all of these. So the first one is Lightroom. We're all probably already using Lightroom, but the new generative fill AI is super cool. It saves me a ton of time.
Speaker 1:If I want to pull a photo into the Lightroom, I can say edit out like a dog's leash, really, really quickly by just clicking over it and getting rid of it. And the noise reduction the AI noise reduction is so, so good. I usually put it at like 30%. I'm not doing to 100. But it's yeah, it's wicked. So I'm able to get a lot more creative shooting at like twilight and even like after dark, without using lights and just using the natural light that's around even after dark, to create images that are really creative, and then just use the noise reduction to pull the noise down.
Speaker 2:So that's Lightroom's generative fill. Then just use the noise reduction to pull the noise down. So that's light rooms generative fill yeah, and noise reduction yeah, and they're included in light rooms like base package.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're using light room classic. They're there as long as you're upgrading it regularly and it's getting better and better every time.
Speaker 2:Is it easy?
Speaker 1:to use. I find it really easy to use if you are already using noise reduction or, like, say, the band-aid tool.
Speaker 2:It's just basically better versions of those Right on, and are you using the noise reduction like all the way?
Speaker 1:No, I'm using it to like 30%. Okay, like you don't want it to look too smooth, right? That's kind of what looks like, like uncanny valley.
Speaker 1:Right, we don't want skin to look like there's no pores, but like 30. Just kiss that sweet spot wicked, okay. What else? The next one I don't think it's super well known, but I use like topaz labs. I've used topaz for ages. I paid for it years ago, but they've added some more ai features lately, so topaz is cool for very one particular purpose that I don't need very often. When I do need it, it saves my ass, which is if you misfocus, you can use Topaz Labs, which is just another. It's very similar to like the Lightroom AI, but it will essentially refocus your photo for you and do a really good job.
Speaker 2:And you don't use it a lot.
Speaker 1:I think I've used it like twice ever.
Speaker 2:Was it expensive.
Speaker 1:Don't remember.
Speaker 2:I think it's somewhere between 70 and 200 okay it's in that like you needed it to save your ass once you bought it yeah, and I'm very.
Speaker 1:It's like a one-time purchase sort of thing. Oh, wicked, so that's topaz labs yeah, the topaz like focus tool is this one which is really cool they have like it's an anti-blur thing essentially right on I've seen ads for it because we share Wi-Fi.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, it's always a bald eagle. Yeah, it is always a bald eagle. Yeah, all right. And so that's Lightroom. We've got two features in Lightroom. That's AI that you're using, topaz and what's next.
Speaker 1:So I use Imogen for one very specific thing, which is the straightening feature. So I live in a place where, more often than not, the open ocean is in the background of my photos and I'm not very good at taking perfectly straight photos. So I would spend hours making sure that every single photo was perfectly straight, with a straight horizon through it and for every single photo shoot, every single wedding, and it was just a time waster. It wasn't like a creative process, it was just me like ficking, my me fixing my own like dumb ass mistake.
Speaker 1:Um, so what I did is I imported my preset the one preset that I use into imogen and I do first pass of editing through imogen. So call in lightroom, pull them into imogen. First pass of editing through Imogen. So call in Lightroom, pull them into Imogen, hit play preset and straighten horizon. And it saves me so much time. It is so worth the price I pay just to save me that time on straightening the horizon. If nothing else, it doesn't do a great job with the editing. Honestly, I have to tweak every single photo after, but it does an okay job as far as like a first pass goes, like it just like tweaks the exposure and stuff. So I don't hate it for that.
Speaker 2:But it really is the horizon straightening that I use it, for how is it at straightening photos when there isn't a horizon? Pretty good, I think. Yeah, so it's not just for straightening horizons, it's for straightening photos, period. Yeah, so that is Imogen.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And you don't use it for culling. No, Until AI can tell the difference between like a creatively a creative photo that's blurred or an emotional photo with eyes closed, I don't cull in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I have used it a little bit for culling headshots, I'm still we'll say I'm trialing the culling. It hasn't quite won me over yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it could probably improve to the point where I would incorporate it in the culling process as of now. Every time I give it a shot, it misses photos that it's not. It's assessing is not technically good, but are a good shot to deliver.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Imagine like a picture where it's like you know a really emotional moment where somebody's crying, it's going to say eyes are closed bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Or when you use blurring in the foreground.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or like creative motion.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Situation Right.
Speaker 2:Right, We've both kind of talked about how these trends that are technically like getting creative with what is technically perfect, Push back to AI. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1:I think we're seeing like a resurgence of dirty, messy, gritty, sort of imperfect photos.
Speaker 2:I think because when we see AI artwork it's so perfect, except for like the eight fingers thing, and we want to know that a person was involved in the, in the creative process of getting our photos.
Speaker 1:I think we like knowing that even more so like more candid, more documentary, more of this like motion blur and movement. I came back from a wedding very recently that I did at a province where, um, we did this one shot the bride specifically asked for, which was like a really messy post, like late night style shot, so all of her details, but like a late night version of it. So we had like the dirty shoes after like they were covered in mud, we threw a couple of Polaroids in, we had like a tipped over wine glass. Yeah, we had like her menus and like napkins, but it was all kind of like instead of before everybody gets there you usually, it's really perfect and polished this was that
Speaker 1:is really cool. Yeah, it was cool and I think it'd be really fun. Like we didn't, but like we didn't actually do it the night of, but if we had, I probably would have put like a pizza crust, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, like, and I did it with like straight on camera flash to kind of look like that like sort of vintagey filmy, polaroid style. Look, she asked for this. Yeah, yeah, she wanted actually this bride, particularly like we did a lot of polaroids, we did a lot of like. Really like I don't want to say it's not grunge, but it's like unfiltered, just yeah unfiltered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is really. What we're going for was a very like authentic unfiltered vibe, which I'm seeing a lot more couples ask for, like true candids, true documentary you are just about to tell me about honey book note taker so that's a really fun one that I freaking love whenever I tell photographers about what they're like.
Speaker 1:damn, that's nice. So how I do my zoom calls? So when I get an inquiry I send off my automated email. That's like book a call at this link and it automatically, when they choose a date on the calendar through honey book, it puts a zoom link on both of our calendars and when we click that zoom link, the honey book notetaker joins the call and it comes up in the chat like there's an AI note taker here. If you don't want that, let us know. No one's ever said anything. Some people ask questions about it. Oh yeah, but it allows me to be really, really present during the call, whereas up until a few months ago, when people were talking, I'd be like hold off a second, let me write that down. I whole call being like where do they want to go? What are some places they're interested in? What is the timeline they're interested in? While they're talking I'm not really paying attention in the moment because I'm so busy writing it all down and being like I'm still doing that.
Speaker 2:I feel like I I as I try to like take really quick notes in the call and then when we get off the phone, I write up the email with her with notes and I'm I'm having to do it immediately after World's Fresh.
Speaker 1:And so I've been doing two. Or, like you know, if you forget to do it and then like the month before the wedding comes and you're like, oh my God, I don't have any memory what we talked about, you know, it'd be kind of awkward. So the way the HoneyBook note taker takes notes is really cool. After the call it creates a full transcript for you and saves it in their HoneyBook project. But better than that, it puts together a really quick little note. That's like here's what you talked about. Here are your action items and here are the couple's action items. Wow, unreal. And then it can actually put together an email for you based on that to send to them. Okay, that's really interesting, really really valuable, huge time saver and huge stress saver.
Speaker 2:I find that really incredible. That is really nice. Okay, so we've got the two tools you use in Lightroom the generative fill and noise reduction. You've got Topaz Labs for focusing images, that's if you've taken a photo out of focus.
Speaker 2:Yeah if you missed focus, miss, missed focus, and which is all I can do and imagines to straighten your horizons or just straighten the photo in general. Honey book note takers hopping on zoom calls, making sure there's a transcript making action items, sending it to both of you. I also like the fact that it's uh, uh sending like setting you both up with the zoom call info yeah, that's and they can, and the couple can go in and like change it and everything too.
Speaker 1:Honestly, that's really useful is that everything I think. So I mean I've got like my chat gpt therapist, yeah, but that's we all do, we all do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are you using? Are you using it to help you write captions?
Speaker 1:I would not recommend it unless you are taking like a course on it, specifically because I think it's really really easy for it to sound like ai yeah, those goddamn m dashes, what's that? It's like the long dash, that's how you know. It's written by ai. Also, ai is super polite and so it's never gonna like go on a tangent in the middle of a conversation. So I I can clock ai now like if it's written by AI a thousand miles away, what do you mean? Go off on a tangent? So like a human being will like say you're writing a tweet or a caption or something. You might like start off doing something and then be like but then this one time in middle school, Well, we've gone off on a lot of tangents recording this.
Speaker 1:Like AI, is going to be very polite, it's going to give you numbered lists and it's going to use a lot of em dashes. It's always going to agree with you. Can I just give a little piece of advice? That's a good turkey tip.
Speaker 2:You got more. Here's a tip. Don't.
Speaker 1:If you're using ChatGPT to help your business, occasionally tell it to not agree with you. I want you to make sure you're giving me the best information possible and not just agreeing with me. Can you give me an alternative? It's a hype man and a yes man Poke holes in this.
Speaker 2:Can you criticize this Occasionally?
Speaker 1:make sure it's criticizing, because if you do that, it'll be like, oh, you're so right and it'll tell you everything you've done wrong. No that it'll be like oh, you're so right and it'll tell you everything you've done wrong. No, that it will not have done before.
Speaker 2:So just a heads up, I made a plan with chat gpt the other day and at the end it was just like it was a project I was working on and I was using it to help me create like steps and stages, and at the end it was like this is the best plan that I have ever seen. Martha, you go, Martha. I called you Martha. Yeah, I was like hey who's Martha?
Speaker 1:Remember when it fully created a fake through hike for me?
Speaker 2:Oh my God, yes, chad GPT once hallucinated your dream, hike, it was like I was looking for a hike hike.
Speaker 1:I was like I want to go on a hike. I want to be like 10 to 12 days, about 150 kilometers, somewhere in europe, that's like warm, like 15 to 20 degrees in may. Can you give me the options that are available, because it's really hard to google that? Yeah, and I had been googling and I hadn't been finding a whole lot, and it was like absolutely alex, absolutely martha, um, you should go on a hike on the island of lesbos. And I was like absolutely Alex, absolutely Martha, you should go on a hike on the island of Lesbos. I was like, hell, yeah, I'd love to go to the island of Lesbos for a through hike. You can hike the whole island. Here's like this big hiking trail. It's a great trail pop like trail community. You can go here, here, here and here. And so I'm like absolutely, make me an itinerary it. And so I'm like, absolutely, make me an itinerary. It makes me a full itinerary.
Speaker 2:You texted me that you were going on a big hike.
Speaker 1:On the Isle of Lesbos Red's like that sounds amazing.
Speaker 2:I didn't know you could do a hike. I was like that sounds like your dream hike. That sounds like you dreamt it up Because I did, you did.
Speaker 1:It doesn't exist. I almost booked flights, you, you were what stopped you in your tracks. Why didn't you like googled? Because, because I have a high school education I was like I'm gonna get a second opinion here, and then the google so I'm looking for, like another reference before I book my flights, to be like can you do a through hike on the island of lesbos? And it's just like no results.
Speaker 2:This is the AI version. This is the AI story version of growing up when people everybody had a story of somebody booking a flight to Sydney, cape Breton, where I'm from thinking that they were going to show up in Australia.
Speaker 1:That flight was only half an hour long. How is that possible, being so confused?
Speaker 2:because it is also really it is also really expensive to fly to Sydney, Cape Breton, because it's not even near a main airport.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just like a little tiny provincial airport, so it's really expensive.
Speaker 2:And so this feels like we're going to see tourists showing up in places and being like I have a full travel plan right here and it's going to be like signed off by chat GP plan right here and it's going to be like signed off by chat gpt and the locals are going to be like that's not real yeah, so I don't think it's going to steal our jobs quite yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why isn't it? Do we have time to?
Speaker 2:talk about this. It's your podcast. This is the alex show. It is not a democracy this is not a democracy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we're just seeing a big shift. I think this is very similar to like when the internet showed up and when we switched from when we like primarily switched from like film to digital photography, there was a lot of fear around it. There's a lot of like this is going to ruin everything and really what it's gonna ruin the tour. It's gonna ruin what tour? The world tour. The world tour on lesbos the world tour of lesbos um, adapt or die.
Speaker 1:Right like things are changing, I think it's good to like kind of stay up on it and like keep an eye on what's changing and how it's changing. I don't think our jobs are necessarily in jeopardy. I think wedding photography is still very much going to stick around because it's real, honest, authentic moments.
Speaker 2:But then people don't want AI.
Speaker 1:of that, they want the real, authentic moment of it.
Speaker 2:Then is there an argument to be made that any job that isn't going to be replaced by AI is going to be threatened by like saturation.
Speaker 1:Get in first, be better, be better, be the best yeah the stakes are just getting higher.
Speaker 2:And that's always like. I never see it as a threat.
Speaker 1:I see it more as a like, good the bar is raising. Let's keep it raising. Let's do the best we can do, like what's stopping you from being the best. I don't stops people from being the best themselves. I think if you want to be the best photographer in your area, just be it. Figure out how to be the best and be it. The market gets more saturated okay, be better I don't know.
Speaker 2:I, I am the person saturating my market. Like there's no difference between me and the next people. Like I once came into this industry and said I'm gonna set up shop here yeah, like, if the bar is raising, like good raise with it there's more than just being like. Generally better there's being the best at blank customer service, marketing, fully delivery times, like you know ai is helping with a lot of that yeah, pick one way to use ai to improve a part of your business.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be an all or nothing. I'm like I think that's one of the. I think people get overwhelmed. They, if they start using ai, they're gonna, they're gonna blink and their home's gonna be a smart home and their car is gonna be self-driving, and uh, it's like, no, you can use it a little yeah, I think so I don't think it's going anywhere.
Speaker 1:So, like you, you can be a holdout. You're probably not, if you've listened to this whole episode but, like I'm I'm gonna adapt because I want to stick around this industry as long as I can and this isn't the last time we're gonna have to adapt no, you know, it's like this is my eighth life-changing event in my life. Right, like once in a lifetime event, yeah, like we keep having once in a lifetime events. You can't be surprised anymore, but they keep happening all right takeaways, alex, we're gonna wrap it up put a bow on it.
Speaker 1:We're using lightroom, we're using topaz labs, we're using honeybook note taker. I forgot one imogen for straightening the horizon and saving me many hours in the process, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks for listening. And if you're planning a trip, uh, and you've used chat gpt as a travel agent, maybe go talk to a real person that could be a good ad for like real life travel agents.