We decided not to do the typical fly-in-for-the-event-and-fly-out trip. We gave ourselves a full week, which turned out to be exactly the right amount of time to settle in, wander around, and actually get a feel for the city.

Our AirBnB didn’t work out the way we’d hoped and after some drama, we ended up relocating to a beautiful little gay boutique hotel in Schöneberg. The hotel was gorgeous, the neighborhood was fantastic, and suddenly we found ourselves in exactly the kind of Berlin experience we hadn’t known we were looking for.

Berlin was the perfect place to battle jet lag. Our first night, we stayed out until 7 a.m. We had the kind of adventures that happen when you’re traveling somewhere new and don’t have to be anywhere the next morning.

And I didn’t want to be on my phone a lot on this trip and as a photographer, it is super important for me to have some way to document our trip, so we decided to get two Camp Snap cameras.

Camp Snap is different because there’s no screen, no instant gratification, no checking to see if I got the shot, just point, click, and do it again.

It was fucking delightful!

A vacation from the screen

I spend a lot of my working life thinking about photography and technology and living in the Bay Area right now means that AI is basically everywhere. It’s in the conversations we have, the products people are building, the way we’re thinking about images, and increasingly, the way we’re questioning what is real and what isn’t.

My own photography work is very much part of that conversation. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to create original photographs in an increasingly AI focused world. And I can indeed confirm that there is something wonderfully ironic about getting on a plane and taking a camera that does almost nothing.

The Camp Snap is intentionally simple. It looks and feels a little like a disposable camera, except you can reuse it over and over again. You take photographs without seeing them first, and then you download them to your phone or computer eventually.

You have to trust yourself

As a photographer, I’m used to looking at the back of the camera. Did I get it? Is the exposure right? What kind of pose is my client doing? Do I like this composition?Should I take another shot?

And there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that. Digital photography is incredible. I love being able to make photographs quickly and intentionally. But when you remove the ability to immediately check your work, something interesting happens.

You stop checking and you really start looking. You see something you like, you lift the camera, and you take the picture. Then you move on.

There is no little dopamine hit from seeing the image appear on the screen. There is no instant judgment. You just have to trust yourself and I love that.

Berlin through a little plastic camera

Berlin was particularly fun to photograph this way. We walked around looking at everything - the colors, the buildings, graffiti, people, signage, weird little corners, meals, streets, tiny moments that probably wouldn’t have seemed important enough to photograph with my “serious” camera.

But that’s exactly what made the Camp Snap so good, the camera helped make my photography feel playful again.

The best part happened at the end of the day

At the end of each day, we’d sit at the hotel and download the photos together. This ritual became one of my favorite parts of the trip.

Some photographs were exactly what I expected and some of them were terrible and lots were surprisingly beautiful. And there were photographs I had completely forgotten taking, that was the magic.

When you’re used to seeing every photograph immediately, you know what you have. With the Camp Snap, the photographs become a surprise. And since my partner, who is not a professional photographer, had a Camp Snap too I got to see the world through their eyes which is so amazing.

The Magic of Limitation

The thing I came home thinking about wasn’t really the Camp Snap itself. It was how much I enjoyed the limitation.

As photographers, we’re constantly being given more. More megapixels, more autofocus points, more dynamic range, more lenses, more editing tools and of course AI is all intertwined in this too.

I appreciate that now we have tools that can change almost anything about an image after we’ve made it, but sometimes I wonder if the next interesting thing isn’t adding another capability, it’s taking some away. I see why in this age of AI the analog experiences is becoming more and more compelling.

I came home with a bunch of imperfect photographs from Berlin and I love them.

If you’re curious about using a Camp Snap, I have a $5 off coupon for you!

CLICK HERE!

I’m thinking about doing a photo walk and/or some classes this fall using my Camp Snap, let me know if you’d be interested by leaving a comment!

I’m not going to share a bunch of prompts with you, I’m just going to share one and give you a window into my thinking about following creative ideas from thoughts to AI generated images.

As a photographer, I’ve spent years trying to show people that the camera isn’t the magic. Someone will compliment the lighting or ask what lens I used, but the photographs I’m most proud of usually have very little to do with my gear. They come from paying attention, from connecting with my client, noticing the way someone laughs when they stop trying to smile for the camera or because I ask one more question. I’m always thinking about how I can create enough safety that a real expression has somewhere to land.

Most of the work happens before I ever press the shutter and I’m starting to realize I approach AI the same way.

When people see one of my generated images, they often assume the interesting part is the prompt. But by the time I write the prompt and generate the image, I’ve already done most of the creative work.

The prompt is just the receipt, the real work is asking better questions.

Let me show you what I mean.

A few months ago I became obsessed with generating images of disco balls. I love disco balls and I needed to create a few for a post I was working on about them. To me disco balls represent - joy, queer history, reflection, community, dancing, and fun.

The way one tiny point of light becomes hundreds.

Instead of opening Midjourney and typing “beautiful disco ball,” I started making a list of everything a disco ball meant to me. I sought to create emotion using my AI generations. What does it look like if a disco ball wasn’t an object, but a metaphor?

Only then did I start writing prompts.

The first ones were obvious.

A glittering disco ball hanging in a nightclub...

Perfectly fine, but then I got more specific. I started prompting from editorial illustration instead of photography.

I stopped asking AI to draw a disco ball and started asking it to explore joy, reflection, movement, and belonging through the language of a disco ball.

Suddenly the images became mine.

Could someone else use my prompt - type those words, sure, but it wouldn’t look the same way mine does because nobody else had taken the same path to get there.

That’s the part I’m becoming interested in documenting with this post, not my prompts. My thinking. I want to share more about the questions that unlock my vision.

The unexpected connections between photography, writing, AI, and everyday life. I think that’s the library I want to build, not a prompt library, but a library of my creative thoughts and impulses that I choose to follow.

If you’re a Midjourney user, I highly recommend choosing a few words and playing in the EXPLORE tab. That’s usually where I get started and keep iterating from there.

Prompts will change. The tools are evolving at lightning speed, and next year we’ll probably all be using something different. But paying attention? Asking thoughtful questions? I have a feeling that’s a creative skill that never goes out of style.

So the next time you sit down to make something, pause before you open the AI tool and ask yourself:

• What am I really trying to say?

• Why does this idea matter to me?

• What keeps pulling me back to this?

Your answers might lead you somewhere far more interesting than the first prompt you were about to write. That’s the library I want to build, not a collection of prompts, but a collection of ways of seeing.

What have you generated lately that’s made your heart happy?

The other day I came across an Instagram post called Life Lessons from a Disco Ball. It was exactly what it sounds like. A series of photos of disco balls paired with little nuggets of wisdom. Several friends sent it to me, which made me laugh because apparently my love of disco balls is now part of my personality.

The last slide was my fav and it said:

Be the light that helps others find their way.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since because I’ve spent a lot of my adult life trying to be that light for other people.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been out in front. I’ve spoken up for the LGBTQ+ community. I’ve built my business around helping people feel seen. I’ve tried to bring my whole self into everything I do because I know what it feels like to wonder if there’s a place where you belong.

I believe that when one person has the courage to show up authentically, it quietly gives someone else permission to do the same.

But if I’m honest, there are days when being visible is exhausting.

The world can feel heavy. It can be easy to question whether your work matters, whether your voice matters, whether you’re making any difference at all.

I’ve learned that even the people holding the flashlight need someone to shine it back at them every once in a while.

That’s why community isn’t just important. It’s essential. We all need it!

I’ve been incredibly lucky to find people who reflect me back to myself. Friends who celebrate our successes. Fellow artists who remind me to keep making things. Chosen family who won’t let me shrink when life gets hard. People who help me remember who I am when I’ve temporarily forgotten.

Maybe that’s why that silly little disco ball post landed so deeply.

A disco ball doesn’t create light all by itself, it has to wait for a light to be shined on it.

Then that light scatters it across the room into a brilliant display. One tiny mirror at a time transforms the entire space.

That’s what the queer community does so well, we reflect one another.

I’ve spent the last fourteen years photographing people, and one thing has become abundantly clear. Almost everyone who steps in front of my camera believes they’re too much or not enough. At one point in their lives someone told them that they are “too much” of something and my job has never been to change those people’s minds.

My job has been to help them see what was already there, what I see. A beautiful person standing in front of another one asking to be seen. I take that part of my job very seriously and sometimes all it takes is someone else reflecting your light back to you.

That’s what I hope people experience when they leave one of my sessions.

For me, this Pride in 2026 is all about reflecting light - not just celebrating ourselves, but helping one another remember who we are. I want us all to help someone feel safe enough to take up a little more space. Do you know someone that needs support to be brave enough to tell the truth about themselves? When is the last time you felt joy and started dancing? Do you feel like you belong?

The older I get, the more I think Pride is less about waving your own flag and more about holding up a mirror for someone else. I’m always searching for opportunities to be the light that helps others find their way.

So here’s to the people who have reflected your light back to you. Here’s to the ones who reminded you that you belonged before you believed it yourself. And here’s to becoming that person for someone else.

After all, that’s what disco balls do best.

They make the whole room sparkle!

PS - This is my first time posting AI generated videos, might do some more!

Last year, I had the honor of having one of my images selected as the promotional image for the exhibition. It was called “Unapologetically Queer” and I certainly am that.

This year feels even more special in a different way. All three photographs feature my creative partner, JT, whose willingness to experiment, play, collaborate makes so much of my work possible. They are the star of each and every photo and I’m so proud!

As tempting as it is to post the images here, I won’t share them until the show is over. If you want to see them, you’ll have to come on by! The opening is Saturday, June 20th from 6-9pm at the Harvey Milk Photo Center gallery.

Instead, I’m sharing the photo that was IN the show and also what we made at last year’s opening.

The piece I exhibited was a self-portrait created during the week that Trump was returned to office. Like many people, I was carrying around a complicated mix of emotions - fear, anger, grief, uncertainty, disbelief, determination. Some days it felt impossible to separate one feeling from another and rather than trying to explain those feelings, I spent some time in my studio screaming. My self portrait practice is a direct reflection of how I’m feeling and wow did I have a lot of feelings.

The curator of a the show, Nicola, asked me if I wanted to set up a Screaming Station at the opening and I said HELL YES!

The invitation was simple:

Scream.

People stepped in front of the camera and gave themselves permission to express whatever was sitting inside them. Some screams were loud. Some were silent. Some people ended up uproarious laughter and everyone walked away feeling a bit of relief.

Then, in a strange and heartbreaking coincidence, in the middle of the show a participant told us that we the United States had bombed Iran. Suddenly the people in the room were wanting to express themselves even more.

What I remember most was the collective understanding and desire for us to express a palpable rage at what was being done to the country that we love so much. For a few moments, strangers gave each other permission to feel things that are often difficult to express in public. The portraits became less about politics and more about humanity. About witnessing each other. About saying, Yes, I feel it too.

A year later, I’m still thinking about those photographs. I’m still thinking about how necessary creative expression is and I still 100% believe that screaming is a perfectly reasonable response to being alive right now.

So thank you to everyone who stepped in front of my camera.

Thank you to everyone who trusted me with your rageful feelings.

And thank you to everyone who keeps finding ways to make art, build community, tell the truth, and yes, occasionally scream into the void.

The current administration has been giving us plenty to work with lately. AHHHHH!

My Favorite Silent Screams from 2025

Hope to see you there! Happy Pride!

xo

SD

Maybe I’m hormonal, but it made me tear up!

The older I get, the more I realize how many of us are walking around carrying stories about who gets to belong, who gets to be loved, and under what circumstances. As queer people, many of us have spent at least some portion of our lives feeling like acceptance was conditional. Be less of this. More of that. Tone it down. Don’t make people uncomfortable. Explain yourself. Defend yourself. Earn your place.

So when I saw those four words, I found myself wondering what it would actually look like to live as though they were true.

That question led me to start creating images of queer people hugging. At first, I thought I was making photographs about affection, but the longer I sat with the idea, the more I realized I was interested in something deeper. Recognition, a similar theme that came to light with my gay bar post.

I thought about the friend who knows your history and loves you anyway. The partner who sees you on your worst day and stays. The chosen family member who saves you a seat at the table. The queer elder who reminds you that you come from a long line of people who survived impossible things. The stranger who somehow feels familiar because they’ve walked a similar path.

There is something profoundly comforting about being with people who don’t require an explanation. People who don’t need a glossary before they can understand you. People who recognize something of themselves in you and immediately smile.

As queer people, we spend a lot of time talking about visibility, representation, rights, and progress. Those conversations matter. They always will. But underneath all of that, I think most of us are searching for something much simpler. We want to belong. We want to know there is a place for us. We want to know that we are worthy of care before we accomplish anything, prove anything, or become anything.

So much of queer life has been built through community, friendships and chosen family. People showing up for one another when institutions, governments, churches, and sometimes even our own families failed to do so. We tell stories about resilience, and those stories matter, but resilience is only part of the picture. We don’t always survive because we’re strong. Sometimes we survive because someone loved us.

Sometimes we survive because reminded us that we didn’t have to do it alone and offered us a simple hug.

Maybe that’s why that sign stayed with me.

Because beneath all the noise and uncertainty, it offered a message that felt both simple and radical. Not “you are loved if.” Not “you are loved when.” Not “you are loved once you’ve figured everything out.”

You are loved.

No exceptions.

Happy Pride homos!
xo

SD

The catalyst for me making these images to counteract the skinny apocalypse we seem to be living through right now. I have never thought about my own body as much as I have in the last year, watching so many people I know go on GLP-1s. I want to be clear: I believe deeply in body autonomy. People get to make decisions about their own bodies, their health, and their lives. Full stop.

But it has been disorienting to watch thinness come roaring back as the cultural finish line. Again. And the truth is, queer fat femmes have always given me a different vision of beauty. Inspired me to love my body, appreciate my big booty.

When I first moved to San Francisco, some of the sexiest, most confident, most stylish people I saw were queer fat femmes. They wore tight skirts. They were showing skin. Tits pushed up to the heavens. They were unafraid taking up space. They were flirting, dancing, laughing loudly, posing for photos, being adored by their friends, and moving through the world with a kind of confidence I had not yet figured out how to access in myself. The queer community provides that - we love different sized bodies. Those memories are so inspiring to me.

They taught me that sexiness was not something you had to earn by shrinking yourself. They taught me that revealing clothes were not reserved for certain bodies. They taught me that beauty could be loud, soft, sweaty, glittery, funny, defiant, and completely unconcerned with being approved of.

I don’t want to romanticize anyone else’s body or turn fat femmes into symbols. Fat people are not here to teach the rest of us lessons. But I do want to be honest about how much I have learned from watching queer fat femmes refuse the assignment of disappearing.

Especially now.

In a moment when so much of the culture feels obsessed with appetite suppression, optimization, discipline, and becoming smaller, I find myself craving images of abundance. More sequins. More bellies. More thighs. More arms. More laughter. More friends crowded around a bathroom mirror screaming, “You look hot, bitch!” before someone walks back onto the dance floor.

That is the world I want to see and that is the world I want to make images of.

A world where queer fat femmes are not the sidekick, the joke, the cautionary tale, or the before photo. A world where they are the center of the frame. The main characters. The muses. The crushes. The ones everybody wants to dance with.

Because I love queer fat femmes.

I so appreciate their refusal to be small in a world constantly asking everyone to shrink. These images are a love letter to them. To the big girl gang. To queer fat femmes. I adore you!

Happy Pride!
xo

SD

Even in my twenties, going out required a lot of planning. A disco nap was required. This is because I have always been the kind of person who likes waking up early. Give me a sunrise, a quiet morning, birds chirping, and a giant cup of coffee over staying out until 2 a.m. any day of the week.

And yet, if you’re queer, you miss out on a lot of queer culture if you never go out at night. For generations, queer nightlife wasn’t just nightlife. It was where community happened. It was one of the few places where gay people could gather and have fun together.

Long before social media, before dating apps, before many queer people had visible role models, bars and clubs served as gathering places where you could walk into a room and feel a little less alone. That is so valuable and that’s one of the reasons I’ve always appreciated photographers who document queer nightlife.

Friends talking at a table covered in empty glasses. Someone fixing their makeup in a bathroom mirror. A couple slow dancing while everyone else moves around them. The cigarette break outside. The exhausted laughter at the end of the night. The hugs, the laughter the queer joy!

This week, while generating images with AI, I found myself imagining the photographs I might have made if I had discovered photography earlier. (I picked up a professional camera at 35) So I chose to work on some AI generated photographs from a parallel version of my life as a 20 year old, freshly out and ready to party at the bars with my friends.

The images I generated make me so happy! They celebrate the kind of queer community I have always loved being part of. And underneath all the visual spectacle of these images, I know that what I am seeking to generate is belonging. This is a kind of belonging that you can only experience at a gay bar as a queer person, sorry, but it is true!

Belonging is a big one for all queer people. Ask any of us about it, it is a fact!

I hope that one day you can have the experience of walking into a room and recognizing yourself in the people around you. The feeling of being surrounded by others who understand something fundamental about your experience without needing an explanation.

The older I get, the more grateful I am for gay bars. Not because I was the last person on the dance floor, I definitely wasn't. As a community we need them to exist. Because generations of queer people created places where we could find one another, celebrate one another, and imagine bigger lives for ourselves. These images in this piece are my love letter to those spaces, to the photographers who documented them, and to everyone who showed up before me and made room for the rest of us.

And even for those of us who would rather be in bed by ten, there’s something beautiful about knowing those spaces existed, and continue to exist, for the people who need them. Hope you find yourself at a gay bar this month, if you’re straight don’t take up too much space, be respectful and smile. You’re in a sacred space!

Happy Pride!

xo

SD

Pride.

Pride as the opposite of shame. Possibility.

Last night this came up in conversation quite often. I’ll talk to an artist, photographer, or designer who is doing fascinating work with AI, and inevitably they’ll lower their voice when they talk about it. They’ll explain how little they used it. They’ll apologize for using it. They’ll reassure me that they’re still a “real” artist. The authorship question is whether AI touched the work.

And every time I hear it, I wonder why we’re talking about this like it’s a confession.

The discourse around AI has become obsessed with purity. People want to know if an image is human-made. They want to know whether a photograph was manipulated. They want to know where the line is. But the more I think about it, the more impossible that question becomes. AI isn’t some separate thing sitting off to the side anymore. It’s built into our cameras, our phones, our editing software, our search engines, our writing tools, and increasingly every creative platform we touch. The fantasy that there is a clean separation between “AI” and “not AI” is disappearing before our eyes.

As a photographer, I’ve watched technology transform my industry over and over again. Digital photography was controversial. Photoshop was controversial. Lightroom was controversial. Social media was controversial. Every generation seems convinced that the newest tool will somehow destroy creativity, and yet artists continue doing what artists have always done: adapting, experimenting, and making work.

What feels different this time is the amount of shame attached to the conversation.

I know extraordinary artists using AI. I know photographers using it to develop concepts. Designers using it to explore visual directions. Filmmakers using it in pre-production. Illustrators using it to push through creative blocks. Some are making work I genuinely love. Yet many of them are reluctant to talk publicly about their process because they know someone will inevitably question whether their work “counts.”

Honestly, I find that conversation incredibly boring.

The question of whether AI should exist has never interested me very much. It exists. The more interesting question is what creative people choose to do with it.

As a queer photographer, my entire career has been built around creating images I couldn’t find. When I started photographing queer and trans communities, there wasn’t nearly enough imagery that reflected the people I loved. Much of my work has been about expanding representation, creating visibility, and imagining possibilities that weren’t showing up in mainstream culture. AI has become another tool in that practice. It allows me to create images that don’t exist yet. It helps me prototype ideas, explore concepts, and build visual worlds that would otherwise live only in my imagination.

One of my favorite things to do is what I call queering imagery. I’ll start with a stock photo that feels deeply heteronormative and ask what happens when queer people are centered instead. Not because there’s anything inherently wrong with the original image, but because I want to expand who gets to belong in it. AI allows me to do that quickly and playfully. It lets me imagine more possibilities.

And maybe that’s what I keep coming back to: possibility.

So much of the current conversation about AI is rooted in fear. Fear about jobs. Fear about authenticity. Fear about misinformation. Some of those concerns are real and deserve serious discussion. But fear is a terrible creative strategy.

Curiosity has always served me better.

When I sit down with these tools, I don’t feel like creativity is disappearing. I feel like creativity is expanding. I feel like I’m collaborating with possibility. Some experiments fail spectacularly. Some are mediocre. Some surprise me. But that’s true of every creative practice I’ve ever had.

The more artists I meet who are working with AI, the more convinced I become that we’re in a moment similar to the early days of photography, digital art, and the internet itself. The rules haven’t been written yet. The norms are still evolving. Everyone is trying to figure out where they stand.

Which brings me back to the idea of AI Pride.

What I mean is this: what if artists stopped apologizing?

What if we shared what we’re learning? Sharing our tools and how we use them because wow things are changing fast! What if we were transparent without being ashamed? What if we approached these tools with curiosity instead of fear?

The future of creativity isn’t going to be built by people desperately protecting yesterday’s definitions of art. It’s going to be built by people willing to explore what comes next.

And from where I’m standing, some of the most exciting artists I know are already doing exactly that. Join us!

xo

SD

For most of my life, I thought of queer elders as other people. The brave folks who came before me. The activists. The artists. The people who survived the AIDS crisis. The people who lost jobs, families, housing, safety, and community simply for being themselves. The people who created the spaces where many of us now get to exist more freely. Somehow, if we’re lucky, we become the people we once looked up to.

This series of images is a celebration of queer aging. A celebration of wrinkles, silver hair, laugh lines, wisdom, resilience, style, and unapologetic fabulousness.

When I generated these portraits, I asked for faces that carry stories, ones that have survived, ones that loved and loss, ones that have danced through decades of change and who still have the energy left to put on sequins and show up to the party.

As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about photography, identity, and now AI, I find myself returning again and again to a simple question:

Who do we choose to celebrate?

For so long, images of aging - especially aging women - have been treated as something to soften, hide, or erase. But I look at these faces and I see beauty, confidence, power, wisdom and most importantly - I see us.

This Pride, I want to honor the queer elders who made my life possible. The ones who marched. The ones who protested. The ones who cared for each other when governments wouldn’t. The ones who built community centers, bookstores, support groups, dance floors, chosen families, and movements. The ones who kept going when it would have been easier not to.

Because of them, I get to live openly. Because of them, I get to make art about queer lives. Because of them, I get to imagine growing older as something beautiful rather than something to fear.

Their courage is the reason I have a torch to carry at all.

And as I step into this next chapter of my own life, I hope to carry it well and I promise that I will continue creating. I look forward to documenting our stories. I promise to continue making space for queer joy, queer complexity, queer grief, queer beauty, and queer futures. I will never stop showing up.

Happy Pride to the elders who came before us. Happy Pride to those of us somewhere in the middle. And Happy Pride to the young people who will one day inherit this torch from us.

May we leave it burning brightly.

Happy Pride homos!
xo

SD

I loved the way these women talked about the creative process in conjunction with AI. There was no soap box claiming that AI was going to magically make people creative, it was an in depth thoughtful conversation about process and the tool we can use to achieve fantastic results!

Most importantly, they asserted that you can 100% stay connected to your own voice while using these AI tools. After watching their conversation I felt more excited about my own experimentation using AI, I thought about what I do to listen to my intuition, they are setting a kick ass example of what creative leadership looks like during this crazy time and wow what a concept to use AI on purpose.

For me, it is deeply meaningful to see these women championing AI in a way that still centers humanity, emotion, aesthetics, and storytelling.

That distinction matters a lot!

For months now, I’ve been thinking about this tension people keep trying to create between “real creativity” and AI tools. As if using AI somehow cancels out authorship.

But watching this conversation reminded me of something I think about on a daily basis - creativity does not live inside the tool. Creativity lives inside the person making decisions. I am the one making the decisions using the tools.

The prompts.
The edits.
The references.
The restraint.
The emotional instincts.
The visual taste.
The willingness to iterate until something finally clicks.
The screaming YES at my laptop when I iterate something so weird and wonderful!

That is the work.

Hearing Siobhan talk through her creative process was honestly refreshing because she wasn’t presenting AI as a shortcut. She was presenting it as part of a larger ecosystem of making. That feels true to my own experience too.

The people making the most interesting work with AI are rarely the people pressing a button once and accepting whatever comes out. They are directing, curating, remixing, refining, jumping from Adobe Boards into Photoshop, they run dozens of variations, they absolutely trust their instincts and in their final work you can see how they’ve learned how to articulate mood and emotion more clearly.

The tool may generate, but the artist still chooses. They have the final say!

One thing I especially loved was hearing creative experimentation framed as a legitimate practice instead of something people should feel embarrassed about. Somedays all I generate is slop and that is ok, I don’t have to post it because it will eventually lead me to something more awesome. So much of working with AI right now feels like being back in the early internet era or early digital photography days.

People are poking at the edges trying to figure out - what works, what feels hollow, what feels exciting and what actually looks/sounds like them.

And I think that curiosity is valuable. Not everything needs to become a polished final product immediately. Some of the most important creative breakthroughs happen in the messy middle where you’re still figuring out your relationship to the tools. That has definitely been true for me.

AI has not made me less interested in photography.

If anything, it has made me more aware of my own visual instincts and it has sharpened my taste. It has made me ask harder questions about authorship, aesthetics, emotional connection, and what makes an image feel alive. And weirdly, it has made me appreciate human perspective even more because when everyone has access to the same tools, your point of view becomes the differentiator.

Watching women openly lead these conversations makes me hopeful about where this could all go next. Adobe’s larger push into AI-powered creative workflows reflects how rapidly these tools are becoming embedded into everyday creative practice. (Adobe)

Iterating on Siobhan of They Are Creative

Siobhan of They Are Creative makes the coolest AI portraits of herself, so I thought about what would happen if I took my AI skills and iterated on certain portraits for this piece. I chose these images to play with:

I used AI to analyze these images and to help me come up with prompts to ‘queer’ these images. I’m really into thinking about what it means to ‘queer’ and image and I can tell you that For me, “queering” an image is about the visual language itself.

Queering an image can mean disrupting rigid expectations around gender, beauty, professionalism, family, power, Americana, or belonging. It’s about expanding who gets represented, how emotion is expressed, and what kinds of stories feel visible or possible inside an image.

Sometimes I like things that look overtly queer, but sometimes it’s subtler - more ambiguity, more intimacy, more emotional honesty, and way more creative freedom.

A lot of mainstream visual culture still operates inside very narrow defaults. Certain aesthetics, relationships, and identities are treated as universal while others are treated as niche. What interests me is exploring what happens when those defaults open up.

Queering an image becomes an act of creative expansion.

It asks:
What other possibilities could exist here too?
Who else gets to belong inside this visual world?
What happens when we loosen the rules a little?

That process feels deeply connected to my work as a photographer because photography has always shaped cultural imagination. The images we repeatedly see influence what feels normal, desirable, aspirational, safe, or visible.

I’m interested in using AI not to flatten creativity, but to widen the frame. Thanks again to Siobhan and Emily for the lovely convo!

If you need me, I’ll be over here queering everything and it is almost Pride month, so I’ll be insufferable with my queering for all of June! You’ve been warned!

What would you like to see me queer next?

SD

This presentation is kind of full circle for me because Adobe had a key role in me going down the AI wormhole. Because when I watched the presentations coming out of Adobe MAX… it was a kick in the pants for me creatively and professionally. Yes, I was concerned about how AI was going to impact my photography career, but also I realized these tools were going to fundamentally shift creative workflows whether we engaged with them or not.

And I remember thinking, I need to figure out what my relationship to these AI tools ASAP and thankfully I had the emotional/professional support to do so.

Since the beginning of 2026, I have become really interested in how AI can support ideation, speed up my experimentation, help visualize concepts, remove friction, and expand creative possibilities without replacing the emotional core of my work itself. I use it in my creative practice almost every day.

I really want to impress upon people that AI is a tool that supports my creative process, not the source of it. I don’t believe creativity lives in the tools themselves. I think it lives in the taste, perspective, and emotional intelligence of the creator using them.

What matters is how I interpret the world, the emotional connection I work to create in my imagery, and the hundreds of creative decisions I make while iterating. The prompts, the selections, the refinements, the restraint, the direction, the feeling. None of that happens accidentally.

The tool can generate infinite possibilities. The artist is the one who gives them meaning.

The tools just change how we get there and wow are they fast!

What excites me about events like Adobe’s Create Now is the opportunity to have nuanced conversations with other creatives who are also figuring this out in real time. Designers, photographers, illustrators, artists, and makers all asking some version of the same question:

How do we evolve without losing ourselves in the process?

The event will include presentations and demos across Photoshop, Illustrator, Firefly, Express, and evolving AI-assisted workflows, but honestly, I’m most excited about the human side of it all because if I’ve learned anything in my AI work recently is that it has reconnected me with the humanness of creativity big time.

I think we need more spaces where creatives can openly share process instead of pretending to already have all the answers. I don’t need another online tutorial, I wanna see it, I wanna talk to you, I wanna ask questions.

Because none of us fully know where this is going yet.

But I do know that curiosity has always been one of the most important creative skills I’ve had and right now, curiosity feels far more useful than fear.

If you’re in the Bay Area, come hang out with us! Come see me talk and then also my dear friend, !

There will also be complimentary snacks and drinks, which remains one of the strongest organizing forces in the creative industry. HA!

#AdobeCreateNowSF

Why Queering It Feels So Right

Reclaiming mid-century illustrations for queer subjects isn’t just aesthetically satisfying. It’s historically meaningful.

Queer people existed in the 1940s and 50s. They fell in love along canals and in cafes and in the backs of quiet bars. They dressed beautifully and desired each other with the same electricity that fills every one of those original paintings. They were simply erased from the visual record, not because queer love didn’t exist, but because the culture that produced these images refused to see it.

Putting queer women into this aesthetic tradition is an act of retroactive visibility. It asks: what if we had been here all along? What if the archive had included us? It reclaims a visual language of beauty and romance and says: this belongs to us too. Queering this imagery doesn’t feel like a violation of the form. It feels like the form finally arriving at its truest, most fabulous self.

And Amsterdam, one of the oldest and most beloved queer cities in the world, with its famous canals, its Pride, its centuries of chosen family and found community is the perfect setting. These women belong there. They always did.

On Being a Photographer Who Uses AI

I want to be honest about something, because I think the conversation around AI and photography deserves more nuance than it usually gets. I ask myself a lot of questions as I generate imagery.

What does intimacy look like in a body’s posture? What’s the relationship between the figures and the architecture behind them? What color story holds the whole series together? The tools are new. The thinking is the same.

What thrills me about using AI in this way is that it lets me work in a visual medium I couldn’t otherwise access. I can’t paint in the 1950s illustration style, not like this, not with this level of technical proficiency. But I have a clear vision, an aesthetic sensibility, and a subject I care deeply about. AI becomes the brush I don’t know how to hold but know exactly how to direct it.

I also think there’s something fitting about using a new, contested, disruptive technology to reclaim an old, celebrated, exclusionary archive. The tools of the present reaching back to rewrite the past. That feels right to me.

The Series

I want to see queer women in every corner of this city’s mid-century imagination. Leaning against bicycles. Sitting in cafe windows. Watching the boats go by on the Prinsengracht. Dressed in silk and pinstripes and red shoes. Kissing where they always should have been allowed to kiss. Queer love deserves to be celebrated across time and visual mediums.

If you want to follow the Amsterdam series as it develops, subscribe below - I’ll be sharing images and behind-the-scenes notes throughout the summer.

I carve out time to tinker with these tools, to find my own truth about which one does what well, what I actually need from any of this, and what I’m willing to use in my work. That process doesn’t stop. There’s no finish line where you finally know enough.

If you’ve been feeling that low hum of anxiety, like everyone else already figured out something you missed, it isn’t just you. This is exactly why Jen of Looking Glass Photo in Berkeley and I came up with an AI class that we are teaching on Sunday.

So much of what we see online right now is AI slop and you know exactly what I mean. Content generated at scale, optimized for engagement, drained of any actual point of view. It doesn’t have to be that way. I made a whole series of images using AI testing how it sees aging women.

The tools themselves aren’t the problem. How we use them and why is the conversation I’m interested in facilitating. I think photographers/creatives are uniquely positioned to have a lot of success using AI, because we already know something most people don’t: having a great camera has never automatically made you a great photographer. Your eye matters. Your intention matters. Your voice matters.

Jen and I are spending our Sunday to teach you what we know, so that you can go out there and play with these tools and make something awesome!

We’ll walk through what tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, and Google Gemini actually do - live, step by step, no jargon. We’ll talk about how to use them in ways that support your creative vision instead of flattening it. And we’ll spend real time on the hard questions: ethics, copyright, authorship, consent, and how each of us gets to define our own boundaries.

You don’t need to be tech-savvy. You don’t need to have an opinion yet. You just need to be curious or even just confused and willing to show up.

On Sunday, May 17th, I’m co-teaching Learning AI Without Losing Your Voice: Tools, Ethics, and Creative Choice at Looking Glass Photo in Berkeley with the wonderful Jen Waicukauski. It’s a three-hour, small-group workshop designed to cut through the noise and give you something rare right now: clarity.

Skeptics are genuinely welcome. Can’t wait to see you on Sunday!

The details:

📅 Sunday, May 17, 2026 🕥 10:30am – 1:30pm 📍 Looking Glass Photo Classroom, 2095 Rose Street, North Berkeley 💸 $149

👉 Reserve your spot here

Spots are limited - we’re keeping it small on purpose so there’s room for real questions and real conversation.

I don’t have this all figured out. Neither does Jen. But we’re both photographers, we’re both paying close attention, and we’d rather work through it together in a room with other people who are curious too vs. just being scared and uninformed.

See you there.

— Sarah

And the whole time I’m watching, I’m doing that thing. You know the thing. The queering thing, where I love something and am simultaneously thinking about what I want to do with it. I decided that this morning using Midjourney, I would iterate on what if this gown lived outside a corner store at golden hour instead of at a gala funded by problematic tech folks.

I pulled a few of my favorite looks from this year's carpet - the ones that really got me and I wrote a prompt that describes the version living in my imagination. Camp. Queerness. Sequins that aren't trying to be refined. Feathers that are a little bit too much in the best possible way.

The prompt

androgynous queer subject outside a neighborhood corner store, wearing playful camp-inspired outfit with feathers, sequins, exaggerated accessories, styled like high fashion but slightly imperfect, candid pose, golden hour light, vibrant color, documentary style portrait, fashion editorial meets street photography

Slightly imperfect is doing a lot of work in that prompt, by the way. That’s the queer part. High fashion that’s been lived in. Glamour that walked here. A sequined moment that stopped for a bacon egg and cheese and doesn’t apologize for it because they’re hungry after being at the club all night. That energy - joyful, unbothered, a little chaotic and colorful is what I’m always chasing.

The side-by-side isn’t a critique of what was on the carpet. It’s a love letter to it. These looks inspired this. The designers and stars who went big and weird and committed gave me the raw material to go somewhere new. I’m a queer person with a vision and a prompt and some kick ass AI generating skills and I’m talking back to the culture in real time.

Stay gay. Go big. Add more feathers.

Props to all of the stars who brought it this year and fuck the tech oligarchs who are trying to buy their way in and ruin something that I love so so much.

Which look was your favorite and why? I’m curious!

xo SD

That last part is what got me. Because my work is in there. I don’t know exactly where, or in what form, or how many times it’s been folded into something else, but 14 years of my photography is in there.

When photographers talk about iteration, we mean something specific. You shoot an image, you see what you did, you adjust. You revisit a subject. You change a lighting set up, you move your subject, you move yourself. You try again, informed by what didn’t work. Iteration is how you develop an artistic style. It’s how you learn to trust yoursefl. Every pass through the work teaches you something about yourself as an artist.

And here’s the gag - AI does this differently. It is not inspired by one thing. It is trained on everything.

When I started playing with AI, I realized I wasn’t just iterating on my own work the way I do in the studio. I was iterating into a system that already holds fragments of so many other people’s work as well as mine. Every version that came back felt both mine and not mine. Familiar, but also impossible to trace.

That is super interesting to me!

I love conversations about using AI as a tool. Dear Art Producer is doing the necessary, unglamorous work of thinking through the business side: usage tiers, upload fees, indemnification, what happens when an image migrates from internal use to external. These are real protections that real people are fighting for, and that work matters enormously.

But I also keep coming back to this: my images are already in there. That happened without my consent. The ship has sailed on a version of this where I stayed clean and separate from the system.

So I’ve started asking a different question. Not should I engage with this, but how do I engage with this in a way that feels true to who I am as an image-maker?

Here’s what I’ve landed on, at least for now.

I have spent years learning how to photograph people. I know how to find the best light. It is my goal to make a person feel safe enough in front of a lens that something real comes through. That skill doesn’t disappear when I’m working with an AI tools, it goes with me. It’s the thing that lets me look at a generated output and know immediately whether it has any life in it, or whether it’s just slop.

Most of what I see out there with AI is absolute slop. Not because the tools aren’t capable, but because most people using them aren’t being discerning. They’re accepting the first thing that comes back. They’re not iterating, they’re just generating.

What I’m doing is different. Or I’m trying to make it different. I’m bringing my eye to it. I’m running things through again and again, pushing until something comes back that surprises me. Until there’s a tension in it, or a quality of light, or a feeling that I would have been chasing on a real shoot. The iteration isn’t random. It’s informed by everything I know about what makes a portrait work.

That’s the thing I feel most sure of: discernment is the skill. It’s what separates making from generating.

I don’t think this resolves the larger questions. The conversation Heather, Kelly, and Jen are having on Dear Art Producer - about rights, about consent, about what the industry owes its artists - that conversation is necessary and unfinished, and I want it to keep going. I want artists to be compensated. I want traceability to exist. I want the people doing this work to have protections that reflect the reality of what AI has done to the ecosystem.

And I want to keep making images with AI. Images that feel like mine, even when I can’t fully trace where they came from. Images made with all the care and intention I bring to a real session with a real person in front of my lens.

Maybe that’s a contradiction. I’m not sure it isn’t. But I think sitting inside the contradiction honestly is better than pretending it doesn’t exist.

The machine already has my work. The question now is what I do with that.

Episode 121 of Dear Art Producer — “AI Is Already in the Room: Protecting Rights, Pricing Access, Preserving Future Work” — is worth your time, especially if you work in commercial photography, artist representation, or production. Listen here.

Queer Time Capsule opened on 4/17/2025 at the Petaluma Arts Center and it the biggest opportunity I’ve had to share my work so far. It wasn’t just a show. It was a living, breathing archive of queerness in a time when it isn’t at all safe to be visible in the ways in which it used to be. I was surrounded by a room full of people saying: we are here, we have always been here, and we are not going anywhere. YES!

I’ve been thinking about that night a lot this week because there was so much joy in being together as a community that evening and also wow sooooo much has happened since.

Earlier today, I went back to look at some of the original images from the show. Instead of just gazing at them, I got curious and asked what would it look like to imagine these same energies, these same identities, across time using AI?

So I started using those original images as inspiration and began generating queer folks from other eras. I stretched open the timeline and declared that indeed - we belong everywhere and across all time and space.

AI Generated image on the left, my original image from QTC on the right.

This is what I love about Queer Time Capsule. It’s not just about documenting a moment, we purposefully chose a name that is built for expansion, legacy, shifting priorities.

We are committed to letting the project grow, letting it respond to the political moment in the time in which we need to and it will always be a space where we hold both celebration and grief, imagination and truth.

Because if the last year has taught me anything, it’s this, we need more opportunties and spaces where we can see ourselves clearly. And we absolutley need spaces where we can imagine ourselves beyond what we’ve been told is possible.

So yes, I’m keeping this project going, there’s more coming soon. If you’ve already been part of Queer Time Capsule, thank you. You are part of something that is still unfolding. And if you haven’t yet, there’s room for you here.

Always.

❤️

SD

I like the textures and colors, but the people look a bit too real, so I iterated again, this time adding some glitter. I like that they’re actually about to kiss and the quality of glitter is grade A. But I wanted to go again…

And so I did, this time I asked for them to look more like plastic dolls and wow did it deliver, but it is kind of flat and shiny in a way I don’t enjoy, so we go again.

The image above was the one I really loved. I dig the hair textures, the pattern on the coats and the background. Then I wondered how easily I could turn this into two queer women.

First iteration, I love. Let’s go again!

And one more.

Which one do you like the most?

I like them all for different reasons! When I iterate I’m always thinking about how I can add queerness as something visible, not implied. I worry about the lack of body diversity unless I prompt it to do so. I am curious about how AI can bring in queer intimacy vs. looking like two friends hanging out. And I always consider styling, texture, color.

Taking time to iterate and push push push you can make your images become more intentional and less looking like cheesy stock photos or AI.

What should I try iterating on next?

XO

SD

I love writing and sharing my thoughts about photography and AI on Substack and so today I sat in bed with my dogs and organized my Substack totally differently and I also tried out all the new personalization options.

Moving forward, I’m giving myself three clear containers:

Experiments → if I’m trying something, pushing limits, learning more about AI
Process → if I’m reflecting, sharing behind-the-scenes, prompts, failures
Observations → if I’m talking about culture, ideas, or what I’m noticing

I go back and forth all the time about posting the work I’m making with AI. Not because I don’t believe in what I’m doing. Not because I’m unsure of my skill level and pride in what I’m creating, but because I care. I care a lot.

I care about the field of photography. I care about craft of image making. I care about being in integrity with the work I’ve built over the past 14 years. I also care about being honest about where things are going.

So I’ve been in this quiet tension of:
Do I share this?
Is it ready?
Will people get it?
Will it dilute what I’ve built or expand it?

I felt the same way as I built up my confidence with sharing my photography.

And with AI as with photography, I’ve been making work that I’m actually really proud of. I feel ready to share! bWork that feels like an extension of my eye, not a replacement for it. Work that still centers light, emotion, presence—but uses new tools to push things further. Work that, if I’m honest, feels like me stepping into a new chapter.

I’d love us all to consider…what happens if I stop overthinking it and just start sharing?

I feel like this is something we all struggle with and I’m leading with courage and just sharing more! I’m using this platform to test whether my voice, my perspective as a photographer who deeply understands light, people, and connection, actually matters more in this moment, not less.

Because the truth is, there are a lot of people using AI. But not everyone is bringing a trained eye. Not everyone is asking deeper questions about intention, authorship, or emotion. Not everyone is pushing for something that still feels human. And I see a lot of AI stuff that is just crap.

I want to be part of shaping that conversation about how we can use AI and maintain our humanity, we can use it to play, to push creativity, to make art!

If you’ve been sitting on something, sharing it, not sharing it, going back and forth, I get it. But maybe the move isn’t to wait until it’s perfect. Maybe the move is to call it what it is: An experiment and hit publish anyway. So here goes…let’s do this!

What have you been sitting on that you’re going put out into the world?

xo

SD

At the beginning of 2025, I was in that January new year’s resolutions big vision, big swings, asking myself what I really wanted and I responded to one of her posts in an Instagram story saying that I wanted to shoot with LaLa Ri.

She responded!

A few months later, we flew her out for a weekend. We had one full day together in the studio. I had a blast buying accessories, pulling inspiration images and preparing how I wanted the shoot to go.

And I love a lot of what we made. There’s a lot of joy in these images.

But looking back now, a year later with everything I’ve explored since, I can also really really see where I held back. Not because I wasn’t capable. But because I wasn’t ready to take some risks with lighting, posing and risking a deeper emotional connection to see what comes of it.

A year ago, I had a solid foundation for lighting and I was doing some fun experiments, but I was way more comfortable staying close to what felt safe. Clean setups. Controlled looks, things I knew I could execute well.

This is an important step in any artistic process. That’s how you build trust with yourself. But growth has a funny way of changing what “safe” looks like.

Over the past year, I’ve pushed a lot further. Especially with lighting. Playing with colored gels. Trying new poses. Brighter more directional flash. Snoots, Black and white processing that doesn’t normally look like something that I would do.

So I used AI to generate some new inspirational images that I’d feel confident shooting today.

AI has really helped me build confidence to take more risks. I love using AI because it lets me iterate faster. Try to imagine ideas. Iterate on possibilities I might not have physically set up in a studio yet.

When I look back at this shoot now, I don’t feel regret. I feel clarity.

I can see exactly where I would push things further today:

• more dramatic light shaping

• more unexpected color interplay

• more commitment to a deeper emotional exchange with Lala (my nerves got in the way of this big time)

• different angles - different lenses

Looking back on what I shot, I feel proud of myself for inviting Lala out to California, but I can really remark upon the fact that I’m not the same artist I was a year ago.

These photos aren’t a missed opportunity. They’re a marker. Proof of what I was capable of then… and a reminder of how much further I’ve gone.

This was the such a valuable lesson in - you don’t wait until you’re “ready” to make the work. You make the work…and then you become the person who could’ve made it differently. I also imagined amazing sets that if I had more resources and space, I’d try out again.

As I was iterating these, I could picture Lala posing dynamically and it made me smile!

What’s something you’ve made that you feel proud of… and can now see you’d approach completely differently?

SD

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And so I wanted to send some love to the trans community today.

I know that wanting to protect yourself right now doesn’t make you any less visible. It doesn’t make you any less brave because visibility is not the only form of courage. Sometimes courage looks like knowing when to step back and keep yourself safe. You don’t need to be on the front lines, we’ve got you.

So to the trans folks in my life, in my community, and far beyond it:
you are some of the most creative, expansive, resilient, and inspiring people I know.

Thank you for existing.

Thank you for being so beautiful.

Thank you for being an integral part of our community.

I made a floral arrangement today using AI with the colors of the trans flag - soft blue, pink, and white. They are an offering. A way of holding beauty, tenderness, and strength all at once.

A reminder that even when things feel uncertain, there is still so much care here. So much community. So many of us who are paying attention and standing with you.

I love you.
I will advocate for you.
I will keep showing up in the ways that I can.

And if this is a season where visibility feels complicated, I hope you know:
you are still deeply seen.

We will get through this together.

xo

SD