In a world where AI makes it so easy to fake credibility, let's use it to polish the real thing.
Your Prompt
Take a photo or screenshot of something in your business that doesn’t look quite right.
A dashboard. A presentation slide. Your office setup. A website page. A video frame.
Upload it to ChatGPT and ask:
“Assume this is supposed to look [professional, calming, casual, Feng shui, etc].
What are the three biggest visual or structural issues holding it back?”
Then ask:
“What is the smallest change that would improve this the most?”
Make that one change.
Pushing Against The Grain
Sorry for the fake out in the title, I'm not giving you a prompt to AI-ify yourself today. There are already plenty of those floating around.
I'm actually not a big fan of enhanced imagery, not the kind that pretends it isn't AI.
As AI video gets harder and harder to distinguish from reality, our real images and personalities become the only proof we're real.
It's our blemishes that will let others know they're taking to a human.
But enough with the brief paranoia… today's post is about using AI to optimize your photographic and videographic presence.
Marketing and AI for me go hand in hand. Around the same time I started as our company's first Marketing Partner, we rolled out a paid subscription to ChatGPT to the team. And I've probably seen more gains in marketing from AI than any other skill.
I just don't talk about it much since most of you aren't marketers.
The name of our podcast came from AI. The logo at the bottom of this email was pulled straight from ChatGPT. Most of my video scripts go through at least one pass of AI for to see what context I might be missing. And I've created about a dozen client avatars with it too.
I've been working out of my permanent studio setup for about 6 months now. My camera doubles as my webcam, my lighting is securely fixed in place, and I'm very happy to be past the days when I'd set up everything from scratch just to shoot a podcast episode.
That said, it's easy to let things drift when you're no longer paying attention to your setup every single recording session. The screenshot above came from a recent episode: the resolution is fuzzy, the colors are washed out, and the camera is angled further left than I'd like.
So as I'm making big plans for the YouTube channel and podcast, it made sense to turn to AI for a refresh of my setup. It's a shame to spend what I've spent on equipment and not love the results.
So first up, tighten up the things I already knew needed fixing.
A little intentionality (and some white balancing) already make a difference.
Honestly, the number one suggestion I'd give anyone starting out is to work on lighting. Turn off your overheads, and get a light (ideally 2) pointing at your face.
But we can still do better.
This is where AI shines. Two years ago this would have meant hours spent on YouTube and Google trying to piece together settings.
Instead, I screenshot my current results, gave ChatGPT some guidance of what I'm looking for and the type of video I'm planning to record, and then we kept going back and forth until we nailed it.
It was able to figure out my lighting angles from the images, and all I needed to give it was the model number of my camera so it could point me to the exact menu settings
First recommendation. For talking head videos (1-1 instruction on YouTube) the camera should be closer to me so I fill more of the frame. I also film these standing up. These changes give more of an engaged, conversational effect, instead of the wide newsdesk/podcast shot.
Next we worked through my camera settings: autofocus, ISO, f-stop, and shutter speeds.
If those terms mean nothing to you, that's okay! They didn't to me either, pre-YouTube rabbit hole a couple years ago.
Long story short, that's how professionals get the blurry background effect that Zoom tries so hard to fake.
New word for your vocabulary: bokeh.
Lastly, it helped reposition my lights, adjust the height of the camera, and move my position slightly off center. It also suggested matte acrylic panels to finally resolve that glare ruining my beautiful Maryland-patterned bluecrab puzzle.
Not too shabby… given the raw materials I'm working with.
I always felt I had a face for radio.
So naturally, I started a YouTube channel!