From Polaroids to Prompts

Why AI Feels Like Continuity, Not Disruption

Working with AI feels like freedom to me.

It lets me turn ideas into images faster and more intuitively, without many of the limits that once shaped image-making. I can follow a thought directly and see where it leads. That openness fits the way I work.

But my relationship with images started long before AI.

What analog photography taught me

I started fashion photography in the era of Polaroids, analog film, and physical sets. Every image required preparation, precision, and patience. Light had to be built carefully. Materials had to be chosen. Every decision mattered.

That taught me respect for the image. And it shaped the way I work today.

Because when you know how much time and craft once went into a single photograph, you understand AI differently.

AI as continuation, not opposite

For me, AI is not the opposite of craft. It is a continuation of it.

The tools have changed — the questions behind them haven't:

• What should an image express?

• What atmosphere should it create?

• How should it feel in a space?

These are the same questions I asked with a camera and a lighting setup. They're the same questions I ask now, working with AI.

What this means for Bonnyvue

That's the question I keep coming back to with Bonnyvue: not what AI can do, but what an

image should do in a specific room, for a specific person.

I still develop every piece the way I once approached a shoot starting with the space, not the tool. The materials, the colors, the atmosphere. What's already there.

The tools have changed. The intention has not.