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If you’re deciding who to hire for your next shoot, here’s the short version: I use AI extensively to work faster and deliver a more polished product — but I don’t let it change the truth of a photojournalistic or documentary image. That distinction matters.
AI is becoming part of almost every photographer’s workflow. The question isn’t really whether a photographer uses AI anymore. The better question is how they use it, what they use it for, and whether they understand the difference between improving a photograph and changing what actually happened.
Here’s the problem you’re actually solving for. Anyone can open an AI tool and generate something that looks like a finished photo or a finished paragraph. Very few people know when that output is wrong, misleading, or simply not good enough — because they don’t have 40+ years of photojournalism and storytelling experience to check it against.
That gap is where flawed deliverables slip through: a mask that clips someone’s hair, a caption that misrepresents what actually happened, a “cleaned up” image that quietly removes something that was really there. You don’t see the mistake. You just get a product that’s a little bit worse, or a little bit less honest, without knowing why.
That’s the line I won’t cross when I’m documenting reality, and it’s worth being upfront about it.
The one rule that doesn’t move: I don’t change what happened in a photojournalistic image
Photojournalism has one job: show what actually happened.
So no matter how good Lightroom’s object-removal or generative tools get, I don’t use them to delete people, signage, objects, or other elements from editorial and documentary images. If it was in the frame, it stays in the frame.
AI is a tool for refining the image I captured — exposure, color, clarity, noise and other technical improvements — never for rewriting what the image says happened.
That’s particularly important when I’m working on assignments where accuracy and credibility matter. The photograph isn’t just a pretty picture. It is evidence of a moment.
But not every photograph I make is photojournalism
There is an important distinction here.
For some commercial, corporate, portrait, marketing, architectural or personal work, removing things can absolutely be part of the assignment.
If a client hires me to create a clean corporate portrait, for example, removing an unwanted object in the background may make perfect sense. If we’re creating an advertising image, the goal may be to present a product in the most effective way possible. If I’m making a portrait for someone and there is a temporary distraction that the client wants removed, that’s a different kind of photograph with a different purpose.
In those situations, I’m not pretending to document exactly what happened. I’m creating an image to communicate a specific message.
So I may use Photoshop, Lightroom or AI-powered tools to remove distractions, clean up an environment, or make other requested changes.
The key is that I don’t confuse those images with documentary images.
When the assignment is journalism or documentary storytelling, accuracy comes first. When the assignment is commercial or creative, the client and I can decide what the finished image should communicate.
That distinction is important because editing isn’t automatically dishonest. Hiding an alteration when the truth of the image matters is.
Where AI does speed things up — and makes the final image better
Lightroom today is built on AI at nearly every step of the edit, and I use most of it:
- Select Subject / Select Sky / Select Background — instant masks that used to take manual brush work now take seconds, so I spend my time on the creative call, not the selection.
- Select People / facial and skin masking — targeted adjustments to skin, eyes, lips, or clothing without hand-painting a mask around every person in a frame.
- Select Objects — quick isolation of a specific item for local correction.
- AI Denoise — recovers clean detail from higher-ISO images shot in low light, which matters a lot for events and documentary work where I can’t control the lighting.
- Adaptive Presets — apply a consistent look that adjusts intelligently to each photo’s own lighting instead of applying a flat, one-size-fits-all preset.
None of these replace my judgment. They replace hours of repetitive manual work.
That means more of my time goes into the parts of the job that actually require a trained eye: composition, moment, lighting, communication, and making sure the story the images tell is accurate when accuracy is the assignment.
AI moves fast — and I have to keep re-checking my own workflow
A good example: I started using Lightroom’s automatic subject masking and found I was spending real time cleaning up the edges afterward — hair, fine detail, and transitions where the mask didn’t quite match reality.
That’s a fair trade-off today. But it’s already changing.
Adobe continues to add tools that give photographers more control over masking and blending, making it possible to refine those problem areas faster than before.
The tools I use are constantly being upgraded, and I expect that within a reasonably short time, I’ll barely need to refine some of these masks by hand at all.
Part of doing this well is staying current on that curve — not just adopting a tool once and assuming it stays the same.
Grammarly is my copy editor
I write a lot of the words that go with my images — captions, articles, newsletters like this one.
Grammarly catches the typos, tense shifts, and awkward phrasing that any writer misses in their own work, much the same way a copy editor at a newsroom would.
It’s not creating my content.
It’s proofreading it.
ChatGPT and Claude: drafting help, not a subject-matter replacement
For longer pieces, my process is consistent: I write the content myself first, because I know the subject, the client, and the story.
Then I use ChatGPT or Claude to help tighten structure, smooth transitions, or clean up phrasing.
After that, I read every line and correct it — because I’m the subject expert and the AI isn’t.
It doesn’t know my clients. It wasn’t at the shoot. It doesn’t know what actually happened.
That final review is the step that keeps the writing accurate and keeps it sounding like me, not a generic AI draft.
What this actually means for you
AI hasn’t changed what I deliver — accurate, well-composed, professionally edited images and writing.
It has changed how fast I can deliver it and how much refinement fits into the same budget.
My role in the process hasn’t gone away. It has shifted toward directing the tools and checking their output, which is exactly the judgment an automated tool can’t provide on its own.
And that’s ultimately what you’re hiring me for.
You’re not just hiring someone who knows how to operate a camera. You’re hiring someone who understands why the photograph matters, what it is supposed to communicate, and where the line is between improving an image and changing its meaning.
If you’re weighing a professional against someone who’s just going to prompt an AI tool and hand you whatever comes out, the difference shows up in the details you’d never catch until it’s too late — and by then it’s already in front of your customers.
Working with someone who knows both the craft and the tools means faster turnaround, a more polished final product, and images and copy you can trust.
And when the assignment requires it, you can also trust me to leave the reality of the photograph alone.
If you’d like to talk about your next project, I’d love to hear what you’re working on.
