THIS PRODUCT PROVIDES ACCESS TO THE RECORDED SERIES FOR THREE MONTHS - YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO DOWNLOAD.
 
Most of us have typed a question into an AI tool, read the answer, thought it was quite good, and closed the window. That is about one per cent of what these tools can do for a photographer.
Four sessions recorded live with our community in the summer of 2026, made because so many of you asked for it. This is not about generating images. Not once. It is about using AI as a research assistant, a critique partner and a patient teacher, so you spend less time stuck and more time behind the camera. Everything Joe shows works on the free versions of these tools.
About the sessions:
 
Part 1. ChatGPT: your creative thinking partner
Why giving it context changes everything, and the settings almost nobody opens. Turning the flattery down. Writing custom instructions, and Joe shares his own to copy, including the ones that make it check its sources properly. Turning off the setting that feeds your chats into the training data, which is on by default. Then he builds a critique partner, sharpens it until it stops being polite, has it score an image out of twenty as a club judge would, and turns the whole thing into a reusable Club Photo Judge.
 
Part 2. Gemini and NotebookLM: research and planning
The camera manual section alone is worth the morning. Upload the manual, then ask which menus to use for a five bracket sequence. Joe did exactly that on a beach in Portugal with the light going. He builds a critique Gem, and when it invents something that is not in the picture he says so on air and bins it. The most requested moment is the interview prompt, where you ask the AI to interview you about your style and your editing, then keep the profile it writes. There is Gemini Live reading a page of the RPS journal through his phone camera, and NotebookLM turning a ninety minute workshop video into a summary, a quiz, a cheat sheet, a mind map and a slide deck. It closes with a backup plan built by letting Gemini interview him, which catches that his own archive was not protected at all.
 
Part 3. Claude: skills, files and building things
This is the one where people said their heads hurt. Joe builds a Lightroom Coach from his own two Lightroom books, then opens a clean chat, uploads a photograph, asks how to edit it, and the coach turns up on its own. He asks for a one page cheat sheet and gets a properly laid out PDF. He points Claude at a folder of seventy nine documents on his computer and it writes the answer back into the folder. He is straight about the risks of that. Then, from one dictated sentence, an interactive exposure triangle page with working sliders, published as a link. No coding anywhere.
 
Part 4. Perplexity, and AI in your editing workflow
Perplexity is the one most people had never heard of, and the reason to know it is sources. Joe clicks one live to check it and finds it goes nowhere, which is exactly the point. Then a beginner's flash course becomes a narrated video, flashcards, a quiz and two interactive websites with working sliders. He explains what Lightroom's Denoise is really doing to your picture, which is not what most people assume, and where AI editing sits in competitions. He finishes with a live audit of a member's website.
 
What people took away:
Joe asked everyone for their one big takeaway at the end. Their words.
Ian: "One AI agent is not enough."
Barbara: "No limits as to what you can ask and what to expect from it."
Keith: "If you don't understand, ask it, then ask it why, how, when."
Ester: "Not to be afraid of having a go, and to be bold."
John: "You can dump all the manuals."
Ray: "Be adventurous."
 
What our community said:
Chris: "Exactly what I hoped for when I signed up. So much homework to do!"
Delia: "Once you leave the workplace it's difficult to keep up with tech. This really helps to point me in the right direction."
Stephen, watching a cheat sheet appear from nothing: "Game changing."
Genista: "Before this I had never used ChatGPT or any of the other sites. Now to go and explore so many different ideas."
Claire: "It's a warren of rabbit holes."
And on the last morning, from Gina: "I am gutted this is the last one."
Barbara's story is the one worth telling. She watched the Wimbledon final, noticed the photographers using flash on a bright day, and did not understand why. So she asked. By the next Saturday she had taught herself flash with her own camera and speedlights, from a course the AI built around her exact kit. Her words: "It's fine-tuned to my own equipment, and that's important. If I'd gone on YouTube, I don't think I would have got it as quickly."
 
Who it is for:
Anyone who feels they ought to understand this and has not known where to start. Several people had never opened one of these tools before session one. Nothing to install, nothing to pay for, no coding. It is just as useful if you already dabble, because most of it is about the habits that separate a useful answer from a bland one.
 
One honest note:
The AI you use today is the worst AI you will ever use, as Joe puts it. Some of the tools have already moved on and one has changed its name. What does not date is the method: how to ask, how to give context, how to push back when the answer is wrong, and how to make these tools learn your photography. That is most of the four sessions.
 
What comes with it:
The four recordings, Joe's own session notes on permanent web pages with every prompt ready to copy, and the full chat from each session. Embedded on the same page, free of charge, is Joe's earlier talk AI Tools for Photographers, the one that led to this series being made: titles for competition entries, writing about your images for judges and viewers, and handing over your captions and keywording so you can shut the computer sooner.
Why we love this one:
These were some of the most engaged sessions we have ever run. People came back the following week having actually gone away and done it. Joe is also honest about the misses. Things fail on screen, the AI invents something that is not in the photograph, and he points at it and shows you what to do about it. That is the bit you cannot get from reading an article.
 
About Joe:
Joe Houghton is a photographer, author and educator based in Dublin, and an Adobe Certified Professional. He teaches AI to universities and businesses, and he has written a book on using AI in photography without generating a single image. He has been part of our community for years.
https://www.houghtonphoto.com/
 
Access is for three months from purchase. Streaming only, no downloads.