When AI Builds a Photography App for Me + Photos
What started as a simple prompt turned into a working AI-built photography event manager and calendar—combining creativity, workflow design, and automation for photographers
Ok. I have to start with a feature image, not a screenshot of the app. So I have picked some photos from my creative photography jourey. I start with two of my images from my first gallery showing at: The Real Deal, 736 Centre St, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 If you are in the Boston area, stop by, have a meal or sandwich and see what you think.
NOTE: There will be an artist’s reception on Wednesday, November 5 from 6-8pm. I will be there along with the other artist-photographers and would love to see you.
The Backstory
For my Photography work, fall is here and the 2025/2026 season begins. This time of year gets hectic in the Boston photography community for everyone and where we engage in:
Camera club competitions (monthly) in Print and Online formats,
Critique sessions to enter and get feedback;
Gallery calls for entry for this year and next;
Online Competitions and Challenges;
Field Trips, Workshops, and Photowalks; and
Exhibition deadlines among others.
Each one brings a mix of excitement and chaos — opportunities to prepare, play, & submit our work, get feedback, maybe even hang a print on a gallery wall. But keeping it all straight? That’s the challenge.
Like many of you, I use calendars, spreadsheets, and checklists… and I still miss the occasional deadline. So this month, I tried something different.
How It Happened
On my own and with some of my photography groups I interact with, we have been experimenting with AI tools that are integrated into Photoshop and lightroom as well as standalone apps like Nano Banana from Gemini, ChatGPT Sora, and more. Most of our conversations and sharing have been around post-processing fun and techniques with our images.
The image above is something I took in Chile at a mountain top with a snow peaked mountain across the valley. I asked Gemini to show a berthing whale coming up from the valley between the peaks. Pretty interesting, huh?
Coming back to my roots as a business and process-oriented guy, I venture into other areas of my photography workflow with some ideas to innovate using AI.
This morning, I was reminded I missed a deadline for presenting my work at the Boston Camera Club meeting last week. I was disappointed in myself, but knew I needed to get on top of my calendar and get more organized.
So, I decided to see what would happen if I wrote a prompt for chat GPT to help me prepare organize and schedule all the events and activities in front of me. So here is what I did.
I wrote a simple idea, with appropriate details and requirements into ChatGPT — a wish list of what I wanted in a photography event manager:
Track entry open/close dates
Add multiple sections or themes (Open, Street, Motion)
Rate my interest in pursuing events or sections of them per category
Snooze or ignore entries I track, but may decide to skip
Export reminders to my calendar
Writing the prompt took about 10 minutes to think through the details. (let me know if you want to see the prompt, be glad to share).
Pressed Enter and… Voila!
Twenty minutes later, I had a working app on my PC!
No coding. No frameworks. Just one file I can open on my Windows 11 PC or iPad Pro, and it remembers everything locally. (For now. As I iterate, I want a cloud solution that straddles my devices).
Here’s what it does:
Keeps a master list of competitions, critiques, and exhibitions
Tracks entry and event milestones
Allows priority ratings, status changes, and snoozing
Exports .ics calendar reminders
Backs up via CSV/JSON files
Works completely offline
What Blew Me Away
It didn’t just “code” — it understood workflow logic, user experience, and photographer context.
That’s what makes this feel like more than automation. It’s creative collaboration with AI photography workflow.
As someone who has spent decades building software companies and products, this was an eerie moment — seeing my own process mirrored and executed by an AI, from concept to functioning system. I am not an engineer and haven’t coded since College, I have managed thousands of engineers, managed millions of lines of code, and built the businesses that conceived, delivered, maintained and enhanced software. This was a big moment.
📸 Recent Images Worth Sharing
Returning to my creative roots here on IMAGE FRONTIERS, I’m grounding myself again in what this space was meant to be — a place to share not just images, but the stories, reflections, and experiments that shape them.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been out shooting again — exploring Boston’s Seaport and nearby neighborhoods with a fresh perspective. The changing light, shifting weather, and quiet moments in between revealed some images that simply stood out — the kind of “keepers” that remind me why I do this.
Below are a few of those recent captures — visual notes from late afternoons, early mornings, and everything in between.
Each image marks a reminder: while AI accelerates everything around us, the art of seeing — of pausing, noticing, and translating vision into form — remains profoundly human.
Starting off with another moody shot from my balcony. Not as fiery as the Sunset Fury, but still formidable.
And after a Kidney Foundation Charity event, I saw this guy driving by. Its an interesting mobile entertainment approach.
And speaking of street, I just zero in on this image. This draws me in with the absolute character of the individual who is totally comfortable listening to tunes and emerging from the alley crossed by someone else who noticed him while traveling by on their bicycle.
Each image marks a reminder: while AI accelerates everything around us, the art of seeing, pausing…, noticing, and translating vision into form, remains profoundly human.
And finally, I shot a friend of mine while he was spinning vinyl. I got an honorable mention on one of the images from this series. See more at my previous IMAGE FRONTIERs Post.
Thanks for sticking with me and my posts. I know I have been a little sporadic, but many of you have spurred me on with detailed feedback and support that keeps me doing this.
Stay tuned for more and let me know how you are doing.
Lessons Learned 🧠
As always, here are some observations that struck me while preparing this post:
Describe precisely, then let go. Clear intent in a prompt yields creative precision in the output.
Prompt Engineering is the Key to Success. I am not an expert, but I believe that what you say in a prompt is key to what you get out of these AI, LLM, and related tools. Be as detailed as possible on the purpose, features, UI, do’s, don’ts, reports and output descriptions as you can.
Photographers are system designers too. Whether it’s a workflow or an image composition, both rely on clarity and sequence.
Learning happens in dialogue and perhaps play. AI becomes more useful the more context it has, and experimentation will help to innovate faster. Explore.
Your Turn 🫵
What’s something you wish you could automate in your creative or business workflow?
Would an AI-built tool like this help — or take away from the art of managing your craft?
Do you want to see the prompt I used?
Drop your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to see how others are bridging tech and creativity.
Copyright Stuff
All photographs and images were taken and produced by me, David Rosen. Feel free to share this post by linking to it, re-stacking, or creating notes to spread the word! The images may not be reproduced or distributed without my explicit permission. If you’d like to use any of them, contact me at Click@davidrosenphoto.com.
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Interesting text and topic David.I started to use Ai for analyzing colors in my photos and help during edit process.I don t always agree with recommendations I m getting but I learned a lot about colours from explanations.It s a game changer for me.Great photos... specially Man Emerging from Alley .Well done!
This was an interesting read, David! AI is amazing, yet a bit scary, too! Kudos to you for being so busy on so many levels!