Photography and Agentic AI

Turning Eight Years of Work Into a Living System

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how creative professionals work, and photographers are no exception. In this article, I explore how agentic AI — a structured AI assistant built from large language models — can help organize, retrieve, and repurpose years of educational photography content. Drawing from my experience as a macro photography educator, I explain what an AI Agent is, how it differs from a basic chatbot, how it works behind the scenes, and what photographers should understand about accuracy, hallucinations, ethics, and long-term maintenance before building one of their own.

a wee robot

I am not a computer expert — not by any stretch of the imagination — but I have not been able to resist the attraction of artificial intelligence.

We are living through a period of change that feels historically unprecedented. Computers are rapidly approaching — and perhaps already crossing — what futurist Ray Kurzweil described as the Singularity: the moment at which technological intelligence surpasses human intelligence and begins improving itself faster than humans can meaningfully understand or control. Whether or not we have fully reached that point is a matter of debate, but few would deny that we are living in a period of extraordinary acceleration.

two wee robots deliver lunch

Watching this unfold is both fascinating and unsettling. At some point over the last two years, I made a conscious decision that I would not be a passive observer of this process. Since the earliest public releases of large language models, I have tried to stay informed and to explore whether these developments might have practical relevance to my work as a macro photography educator.

What follows is not expert advice. It is a report from the field — my experience building what is known as an AI Agent to address a growing problem within my own body of work.

A computer chip - sensor

The Problem: When Creation Outpaces Organization

Modern photographers — especially those who teach — face a peculiar paradox. We create more content than we can effectively organize.

mosquito’s eye, for no particular reason

After eight years of videos, livestreams, blog posts, downloadable PDFs, lesson notes, gear breakdowns, and thousands of viewer interactions, I found myself sitting on a tremendous archive of useful material that was becoming increasingly difficult to access. The problem was not a lack of information. It was retrieval.

I did not need more content. I needed a way to find and reuse what I had already created.

What I really needed was an archivist — someone who understood my work well enough to locate a specific explanation from a livestream three years ago, compare it with more recent guidance, summarize the differences, and present the result in a useful format.

Hoverfly takes a rest from hovering

The question that naturally followed was this: Isn’t that exactly the sort of task large language models are designed to handle?

It seemed straightforward. It was not.

What my desk would look like if it were clean and tidy

What AI Is — and What It Is Not

Before describing the solution, it is important to clarify terms.

Artificial intelligence, broadly speaking, refers to software systems that perform tasks we associate with human cognition: recognizing patterns, generating language, classifying information, and making predictions. Large language models, or LLMs, represent a subset of this field. They generate text by predicting the most statistically probable next word or token based on context.

The mother of all boards

An LLM does not understand in the human sense. It does not think, reason, or possess awareness. It generates output based on probability patterns learned from vast amounts of data. Its fluency can easily give the impression of comprehension or authority, but fluency is not the same as truth.

This distinction matters. An LLM can be extraordinarily useful. It can serve as a catalyst for ideas, a drafting assistant, and a tool for synthesis. But it is not infallible, and it does not possess judgment. The responsibility for accuracy remains entirely with the human operator.

Wrong kind of agent

What Is an Agent?

A standard chatbot answers a prompt and stops.

An AI Agent is something more structured. It is a system that can take a goal, break that goal into steps, retrieve relevant material, apply rules, and generate structured outputs. It may use tools such as file systems or databases, and it can be constrained by explicit behavioral rules.

The system I began building — which I have tentatively named the AWP Content Agent — is trained exclusively on my own published material. It is intentionally isolated from the broader internet. Its purpose is not to generate new opinions, but to retrieve and organize what I have already said.

Clever robot (right) plays chess with robotic arm (left) and loses

In practice, it functions as a librarian, research assistant, editor, production assistant, and quality-control reviewer. It can locate prior explanations, summarize recurring themes, assemble structured lesson outlines, and identify contradictions across time.

For someone managing a large technical archive, this is not a novelty. It is a force multiplier.

Portulaca seed (from the planet portulaca)

Why This Matters in Macro Photography

Macro photography is unusually dense with technical variables. Discussions of magnification quickly intersect with numerical aperture, diffusion geometry, stacking artifacts, vibration control, rail calibration, and specimen preparation. Explanations overlap. Advice evolves. Positions refine over time.

As a result, the same foundational concepts may appear across dozens of videos in slightly different forms. Over the years, improvements in understanding inevitably introduce inconsistencies. Viewers asking thoughtful questions often require cross-referencing multiple past explanations.

Manually managing this level of complexity becomes impractical.

An agent grounded in my own curated archive has the potential to retrieve all instances of a specific topic, prioritize the most recent guidance, and present a cohesive summary. It can transform a static archive into a working knowledge system.

An escaped computer chip

The Hard Lesson: Curation Determines Quality

I initially imagined that I could simply “feed” my entire body of work into an AI system and allow it to organize everything automatically.

In reality, the quality of the agent depends almost entirely on the quality of the corpus it is given. Content must be cleaned, structured, labeled, dated, and tagged. Canonical versions must be separated from drafts. Outdated guidance must be clearly marked. Metadata must be consistent.

Without disciplined preparation, retrieval becomes unreliable. The model becomes prone to hallucination, contradiction, or overconfidence.

scruffy looking robot arm with optional laser canon

Building a functional agent is less about clever prompting and more about systematic content architecture.

How an Agent Works Behind the Scenes

Although the technical details vary by platform, most agent systems follow a similar workflow.

First, content is ingested and converted into structured text. Next, the system indexes that text so that it can quickly retrieve relevant passages. When a question is posed, the system searches the corpus, assembles the most relevant segments, and passes them to the language model as contextual input. The model then generates an answer conditioned on that retrieved material and on the rules provided by the builder.

The critical point is that retrieval precedes generation. If retrieval fails, generation may still occur — and that is where hallucinations arise.

Because each platform handles indexing, ranking, and context assembly differently, no two agent systems behave identically. All, however, produce answers in the same confident tone.

Confidence, again, should never be mistaken for correctness.

Maintenance and Known Failure Modes

Lady compares her failure modes to those of her refurbished macBook Pro

An agent is not something you build once and forget. It requires ongoing maintenance.

New content must be added. Outdated advice must be retired or labeled. Major shifts in opinion should be date-stamped. Citations should be spot-checked. Hallucinations should be logged and used to refine the system.

Failure modes are predictable. An agent may misattribute quotes, rely too heavily on older material, retrieve incomplete context, or overstep boundaries by offering advice beyond its scope. There is also the human danger of automation bias — the tendency to trust outputs simply because they sound intelligent.

For this reason, I have imposed strict behavioral rules within the system. It must cite sources when referencing my prior statements. It must prefer newer material when contradictions exist. It must admit uncertainty when evidence is insufficient. It must not invent sources.

A good sign your computer is shot

These constraints do not eliminate error, but they significantly reduce risk.

Ethical Responsibilities

a blind greengrocer struggles with her scales

With powerful tools come responsibilities.

Any AI-assisted content should be clearly identified as such. The human creator remains responsible for accuracy, citation legitimacy, and ethical judgment. Sensitive or private material should never be casually included in a corpus without careful consideration of privacy implications.

An agent is a tool. It is not an authority, and it does not absolve its operator of responsibility.

Where This Is Heading

robot maker regrets using superglue to secure robot’s replaced index finger

For many photographers, building a custom agent may not justify the effort. The time investment is significant. But for educators or creators managing large technical archives, the advantage may shift from those who merely possess knowledge to those who can retrieve and apply it efficiently.

Agents should be thought of as apprentices rather than authors. They can fetch, sort, draft, and format. They cannot replace judgment, ethics, taste, or creative vision.

Photography remains a profoundly human act of attention. An agent cannot see for us.

But in the domains of organization, synthesis, and teaching, these systems can reduce friction and extend our reach. Going through this process has not made me a better photographer. It has, however, made me a more efficient educator and a more informed participant in a rapidly changing technological landscape.

For now, that is more than enough.

Summer evening on the gulf

The Week Ahead

Thanks to everyone who commented on the “Transition” series of Livestreams.It was a lot of fun to produce and should be useful to anyone new to field or studio macro photography.

The coming week is going to be fun - the competition from February is over and I am starting the judging process today. It has been quite a while since I did a live discussion of the entries and announced the winners during a Livestream.That is what I am going to start the week with - a Competition Results Livestream - where I will show and discuss every entry and announce the winning images. That will be during Macro Talk, on Tuesday at 8PM. Here is your link… https://youtube.com/live/iyXXlhZJ8sw?feature=share

On Thursday I am going to walk you through the steps of creating your own AI Agent and showing you some of the ways in which this remarkable technology can help a macro photographer take better pictures while becoming more efficient. For more information, see below. This is your link to the the Macro Talk Too Livestream, at 2PM on Thursday afternoon … https://youtube.com/live/FKRqffUP8Js?feature=share

Saturday is the March AfterStack - #40 for anyone keeping track - and we are going to be addressing photoshop techniques for correction of focus stacking artifacts. It is free, it is fun, and here is your invitation…

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: AfterStack #40 - Correcting Stacking Artifact

Time: Mar 7, 2026 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86060739147?pwd=3nxx1ShFE7WWd4hCpyGyzWE154nzWO.1

Meeting ID: 860 6073 9147

Passcode: 966162

Join instructions

https://us02web.zoom.us/meetings/86060739147/invitations?signature=hGG14MPa8nlIBaoXyHA_marrFscNmf-kNII9EcN3FMI

death valley, north carolina

And that is it for this week. We Weill be getting back to mainstream macro next week. I also have an announcement concerning the competition, but to hear that you need to come to Tuesday’s stream! Have a great week!

Allan

The Robots are Coming

Greetings everyone,

I have something very exciting that I want to tell you about this week. Something that will finally fulfill a promise that I made several years ago. The promise was that I would re-organize my YouTube and website content to make it searchable in a way that would allow anyone to find exactly the content that they need, quickly and accurately. Doing this manually, which required reviewing every scrap of content, indexing the best bits by subject, and building a practical database proved to be an impossibly complicated task that, at the end of the day, would result in a final product that was about as accessible as the work already was, in my YouTube back catalog - which is to say, not at all accessible.

I have recognized all along that having a way to retrieve specific content from my extensive collections on YouTube and my website was going to be a mandatory condition for the continued growth of the channel. However, the best I could come up with was adding a search function to my blog page, which turned out to be a much needed improvement, but still not able to find the content without considerable effort and some prior knowledge of the appropriate search terms. We limped along like this for a long time, though it quickly became apparent that there was another factor that was preventing useful extraction of information from my videos and articles. To successfully find specific content through the search function on my blog page (https://www.allanwallsphotography.com/blog) relied heavily on my provision of complete and precise video documentation, along with accurate tagging and key-wording (a fact I only learned much later). As I had been doing none of this, it rendered the search tool frustrating and unhelpful.

Accepting help from outside the organization, an idea that seemed reasonable at the time, proved instead to be a huge mistake. I was so frustrated with the situation, having hundreds of hours of content but no way for viewers to take advantage of it on demand, that my judgement was impaired. Despite overwhelming misgivings, I allowed a slick-talking and self-proclaimed tech-master to come onboard to lead a restructuring of the channel’s operations, including the development of a searchable content database. Many months later, with no sign of the promised content library, it gradually dawned on me that I had been right to doubt this person’s integrity. Eventually it became clear, through official documents that this individual had a hidden agenda and a plan to repackage and commercialize my content through a proposed new company, controlled solely by a new majority owner. Needless to say, my naiveté in engaging with this person was a huge mistake, and while this mistake may still pose a threat to the viability of my company, it also provided me with a lesson that needed to be learned. So, here I was, another year older, and no closer to the searchable content database that had become something of a millstone around my neck

That was such an unpleasant experience, leaving me angry and embarrassed, that I did not look any further for outside assistance with this chronic issue. I did ask for, and received, help from a wonderful group of supporters who volunteered to help me with my next idea for building the database. I am eternally grateful to this group of supporters who took the thankless task of reviewing all my content, organizing it into a catalog, assigning relevance scores to the content blocks, and facilitating the building a  searchable data base. These wonderful people were all experienced in business and/or data management, and were led by two long time supporters of the channel. Though this awesome group worked hard to produce a huge amount of of data characterizing the content in a great many of my videos, the data proved to be too granular and fragmented for me to work into a tool that could offer practical assistance to a viewer looking for specific content. I must quickly add that it was my own limited abilities and resources in this area that brought this project to a halt. The data is still here and it may one day be part of the solution. I would point out that this effort was made recently enough that some of the Artificial Intelligence language tools were already  appearing on the scene and had been involved in this unsuccessful attempt at organizing my mess.

The men and women who were part of this initiative have my gratitude and respect for all they did. Thank you Amy, Susan, Mike, Jeff, Jillian, and everyone else who offered assistance.  To each of these friends I will reiterate that the eventual failure of this strategy was entirely my fault. Overconfidence, underestimation of the size and scope of the project, and my complete lack of time-management skills all conspired to slow and eventually halt all forward momentum. And with that I found myself right back at square one - making content faster than I could document a way to find it once it was made. I thought that would be it, nothing would change, and I would keep on doing the same thing that I had been doing for the last seven years. It turns out that even in this assessment, I was wrong.

This past weekend, during the first Pzoom meeting of December, something happened that, in an instant, transformed this elephant in the room into a real opportunity to reimagine this channel and give my audience what they have been asking for all along. This epiphany had nothing to do with me. It was a result of an idea proposed by my dear friend and long-time supporter, Patrick Stahel. Patrick demonstrated a project he had been working on that used an agentic AI resource (NotebookLM) in the Gemini family to  assimilate the transcribed content of most of my back catalog into a fully functional interactive data repository, accessible to anyone with a computer and internet connection. In plain English, Patrick had fed a huge part of my accumulated content into a computer program that used this content, and only this content, to build something very similar to Chat GPT but on a very limited scale. Patrick was able to take yeas of my transcribed content and turn it into an AI powered interface that any of my viewers can use to find exactly what they want from my back catalog, in precisely the format they prefer, in an instant.

A dragonfly smile

Let this sink in for a moment. I am not giving you a list of video titles in which I talk about focus stacking, or bee photography. This is vastly more powerful. You can ask this agent to scan through every word of my content, since the first day of the channel, and give you answers to questions like this:

Q) please recommend the best three pieces of video content related to insect cleaning techniques. Prioritize videos with detailed demonstrations. Exclude videos longer than 45 minutes in duration.

Q) Please find every piece of video and written content in which Allan gives gift suggestions for macro photographers and list the gift suggestions from lowest to highest price. Include a brief summary of each gift’s key specifications.

Q) Please list the top ten field-technique videos based on the number of viewer comments posted on YouTube. Summarize the viewer comments and order the videos based on how helpful the commenters found each video.

I could go on… How you will use this tool is entirely up to you. You get to ask the questions and the bot (for want of a better word) will do the heavy lifting. And it works. Much of the work has already been done, but I plan to start over, building the database with all of my previous work. It will include not only my videos but over 300 hours of livestream discussions and as many printed articles. I think this is at least as important as including video content as my livestreams have evolved into some of the densest and most thoroughly researched content available through my channel. And I have covered a great many topics not discussed in previous videos. I would say the same for some of my written content, which will also be included in the resource pool.

I am not going to rush this process and part of the reason for starting over from scratch is so that I can learn as much as possible from the process. Once the Agent is built it will need to be tested and probed for weaknesses. I will be asking a few people to stress the system to bring out any issues that need to be addressed prior to release. With testing complete, the Agent will get a catchy name and will jeavailable for you to use. I will post the link on my website, the Walls-app, Discord and Patreon as soon as it is launched. It will cost nothing for you to use and I will continue to keep the tool current, uploading each new content block as it is released. While I am obviously not the first person to use today’s amazing technology in this way, I must confess that I am unaware of anyone in the macro-phtography space who is using it in this way - and that is very exciting!

Let me curb my enthusiasm long enough to offer a few words of caution. I am enthusiastic about the promise of this tool for one primary reason - this is exactly the kind of thing that LLMs (Large Language Models) do extremely well. LLMs are made for this kind of advanced language processing, it is their superpower. BUT… (and you will hear this from me again) you must keep in mind that the interface I am giving you access to has a reality that consists solely of the words that I have strung together in hundreds of hours of content. It knows nothing about the world beyond my content (except what it may have picked up from my content) and so it will not be able to respond to prompts about other matters. Also, I make mistakes and there are likely to be inconsistencies in some of the material that I taught five years ago and the way I treated the same content last Tuesday. In other words, you will have access to a machine that can find and organize every word of my published content, but what you do with that information is up to you. Going forward I will be looking for ways to use this remarkable technology to correct earlier mistakes and make the output more up to date, coherent, and complete. But that is going to take time. As has been my goal since the first video was published, I want to produce content that is an accurate, complete, enjoyable, and as accessible as possible. This new development will move me a little closer to that goal. As we develop this tool, I will be counting on you to tell me what is working and what is not. Do not hesitate to tell me when there are improvements to be made - If this isn’t working for you, then there is no reason for me to be doing it.

*****

Before I go, let me briefly outline the week ahead. As usual, we start the week with Tuesday’s Macro Talk, at 8pm central time. This week I am planning to share with you the ultimate holiday gift list. It is actually a wish list for macro photographers, so unless you have one of these rare creatures in your life, you can use this list to guide your hint dropping activities over the next couple of weeks. Your link to the livestream is right here… https://youtube.com/live/i_CtzBlGoVE?feature=share

Thursday at 2PM is Macro Talk Too where we will expand on a discussion we had several weeks ago and talk about your photography plans for the coming off-season. Last time I visited this topic I talked mostly about interesting activities that could replace macro photography during the coldest months, but this time I want to talk about some actual macro activities that either take advantage of the season, or are at least accessible when the frost is on the pumpkin (is that a real saying?). Anyway, some of the ideas I want to discuss are unusual enough to come as a surprise to some of you. Your link to this livestream is here… https://youtube.com/live/a-127D-7Dug?feature=share

For more information about these streams, please visit my website at https://www.allanwallsphotography.com/blog/gift

I will be taking a few minutes at the beginning of both of these livestreams to talk about the new website feature described above, going into a little more detail and giving an update on my progress. This would be a great time to ask any questions you may have, or make any suggestions about features you would like to see included. I will also be able to give a better estimate of the timeline for getting this tested and into service.

Friday is Crystal Art, with Harold Hall and your’s truly. This is a live Zoom event for anyone interested in the fascinating world of birefringence photography. We talk about growing and imaging crystals to make stunning abstract art. If that sounds like fun to you, please join us on Friday, December 12, at 2PM. Here is your invitation to the event. Remember that we will record the meeting for release on YouTube - if you don’t wish to be in the video do not turn on your camera or microphone while in the meeting!

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allan Walls’ Crystal Art with Harold Hall

Time: Dec 12, 2025 02:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=83515007568

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

Join instructions

https://us02web.zoom.us/meetings/83515007568/invitations?signature=sUhBI8zwugIau4CwZK0BLhbSds787lqhjfJEe2tsM2w

And finally, Saturday sees Episode 37 of AfterStack - a discussion roundtable for macro photographers interested in post processing. A wonderful group of talented artists who love to play in Photoshop! Come learn with us. It is free and you are most welcome. Your invitation is right here -

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allan Walls’ AfterStack with Bud Perrott

Time: Dec 13, 2025 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=83925997556

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

Join instructions

https://us02web.zoom.us/meetings/83925997556/invitations?signature=svqe_uG7LH6yER1QyIELFkMZCG2Kr1xy-HnxxWF9bS8

And that is it for this week! It is a lot for one post and I hope to see you sometime this week.

Allan

How Photography Dies - Ten More Years

Greetings all!

This will be a short post today. I have a lot of preparation to take care of before the week gets properly under way, and a bunch of errands that I was supposed to take care over the weekend. My assistant is still out sick (it will be seven years at the end of August) so I am flying solo today.

I did spend quite a bit of time at the weekend contemplating the future of our country, our planet, my channel, and our shared enthusiasm for macro photography. All this pondering got me thinking about the future of photography, in general, and macro photography, in particular. I talked to some trusted colleagues and made a lot of notes, and by the time I was done, I had pretty much convinced myself that my prognostications were spot on. The short version of the story that I came up with is that photography, as we know it, will be gone by 2035, and replaced by something only distantly related to what we do now.

mystery crystal

But I also thought there was a lot to be excited about during and after this 10 year transition. On Tuesday, in MacroTalk, I am going to lay out what I believe we can expect to see during the coming decade, and I will explain why I believe that we will see the disappearance of photography, as we know it, by the end of that ten years. Here is your link to this stream… https://youtube.com/live/2gOAsER2dak?feature=share

On Thursday I would like to bring the discussion back to the present and talk a little bit about the ways in which our shared passion for macro photography can be used to make our communities a little better. Using examples from across the country and around the world, I will show you how our hobby can used as a force for good in the world. This is a topic that I get excited talking about and I hope you will too. You link to this stream is right here… https://youtube.com/live/YF_R93BBtHs?feature=share

On Saturday we have a Pzoom scheduled for my Patreon supporters - the invitation is over on our Patreon page. This is going to be something completely different. I am going to try something that just popped into my head, but something that I think could be a lot of fun. We are going to have a Q&A session. But a Q&A with a major twist - I will be the one asking the questions! I think I know most of my supporters well enough to be able to get them talking about the things they are interested in. It isn’t a competition or a test - just a fun way for us to get to know one another better, and maybe to learn some new stuff. Participation is voluntary and I won’t be putting anyone on the spot. We will also have time for updates, questions, and discussions, as usual.

From Lester’s last visit

Don’t forget that we will be welcoming Lester Lefkowitz for a special Patreon only event on September 13, 2025. He is coming on to talk about his method for organizing images in Lightroom - I am really looking forward to having him back on the channel - I will let you know more about the visit after he and I finalize our plans later today. Here is your invitation to that special Pzoom - Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allan Walls’ Pzoom, with Special Guest Lester Lefkowitz

Time: Sep 13, 2025 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=86115663605

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

Join instructions

https://us02web.zoom.us/meetings/86115663605/invitations?signature=ESYCAY03JcBmHrEu3N4rADC7hHIqILtINKEoSG2_kkg

AfterStack 29 was this past weekend, and a lot of fun. We talked about the new tools available in Photoshop, and how we are using them. As always, I left the hangout with a handful of new ideas to try. The video will be posted to YouTube today and you can watch it by following this link… https://youtu.be/w6IjqucarhU

The original art - new cover to follow soon

Don’t forget about our Crystal Art group that meets at 2pm on the second Friday of every month. This is NOT the new cover art for the videos. That is still in the works but should out soon.

One of my very favorite crystal images

I have also set up a Google Drive folder for you to drop any images that you would like to discuss in the group - here is the link. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ngiRDNHPdoGkx2fcOqedd3EDn_TZjVF3?usp=sharing      Feel free to use this link to drop any images that you would like to share with the group at the next meeting (September 12, 2025) - it would help a lot if you could add the date of the session in your title, so that I can keep the folder organized.

And while I’m at it, here is the link to the next program on Friday September 12th, 2025!

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Crystal Art with Harold Hall

Time: Sep 12, 2025 02:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=83741904293

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

Join instructions

https://us02web.zoom.us/meetings/83741904293/invitations?signature=mzLewHjxR9J2iWrYlWZ6ET6B3_7r-cytzWVdiqGVTZw

hello there…

That is enough for one post, don’t you think!? I hope to see you at today’s stream! Allan

Meet Kelly Boesch - an Extraordinary Talent

Hello Macro-mates (is that even a thing?)

A weevil

I hope you had a restful weekend, and that those of you still fortunate enough to have a dad around got to spend some time with his on Sunday. I had a really nice visit with my kids (if I’m still around when they are in their 60s, will they still be kids? Yes, of course they will!)

Anyway, today is Monday and there is much to be done, like triple checking my YouTube live-streaming credentials. I was terribly embarrassed last week, after going the better part of a year without a hiccup on the livestream, to have two disasters in one week. At least the disasters were of a common cause, making them more like one extended disaster, which sounds a tiny bit less incompetent. I will do everything in my power to make sure there is not another week like that in the foreseeable future. But there a couple of really fun and interesting things on the horizon that are definitely within the foreseeable future.

Lester Lefkowitz will be visiting with us in a couple of weeks - we still have some details to work out, but it is looking like he will be our special guest for the first Pzoom in July. He is coming back to tell us about his Lightroom system for not losing pictures. He will present his talk and follow up with a Q&A to address any questions that come up. After the Pzoom is over I will edit the content into a YouTube video that will be available to everyone within a few days of the meeting. I will keep you posted when I know is dates for sure.

This past weekend I had the immense please of making contact with one of the most talented  artists working in the strange world of AI powered video content creation. Some of you may recall a clip from a piece of generative video content that I showed during a livestream a couple of weeks ago? It was fresh, mesmerizing, with beautiful color and a surreal dream-like flow that was altogether a new experience for me. It was is a selection of paintings by Magritte, or Dali had come to life for a short, but remarkable and very satisfying, moment in time. Well I was completely taken by this new type of video content in general and the work of the artist, Kelly Boesch, in particular. Here are links to a couple of Kelly’s videos. I encourage you to visit her YouTube page  and explore some of the totally original content that she is making. I was so impressed by the quality of Kelly’s work that I reached out to her this weekend and asked if she might be willing to record a conversation with me, so that I could share it with you. She replied immediately and most graciously agreed to an interview. One of the things that grabbed my attention was Kelly’s fascination with insects and the frequent appearance of weird and wonderful insect-like characters in many of her videos. I hope that this interview will be available in  a week or two - and I will let you know the minute that it is.

Some of my favorite surrealist video art by Kelly Boesch::

1) An AI Dance Music Video - https://youtu.be/soRDe1XbWmM?si=w0-pmnnKWJvwE-Ti

2) A Story About Aging - https://youtu.be/28z0mAxIDQw?si=dtuA5iUwpuj7x7yG

3) Kids with Magical Creatures - https://youtu.be/8wkKg_bdc2k?si=gFZHzPsVDvTQrRkl

Try to keep in mind that these video stories were created in the mid of Keely Boesch but interpreted and transformed into video content by AI tools like #Midjourney, #Luma, and #keyframe!

Let’s get back to this week. I have something very special for you tomorrow in Macro Talk, Tuesday at 8PM. This stream was prompted by a question I was asked last week. A friend asked me to discuss the equipment and workflows being used  for high speed, handheld focus stacking in the field, by wonderful macro photographers like Claus Giloi, and Graham Carey. And that is precisely what I am going to attempt in Tuesday’s stream. I will be showing some of the great work by Claus and Graham and then breaking down every piece of equipment and every step in their respective workflows. Bring your questions and get up to speed on the new focus stacking superpower! Your link…https://youtube.com/live/54x6STaXN0Y?feature=share

Thursday’s Macro Talk Too, at 2pm, is going to be a more traditional Q&A where I will attempt to answer the questions that have been piling up for a few weeks - a lot to talk about but feel free to bring any macro questions that you have been  struggling with. Here is your link…. https://youtube.com/live/dfzxWF0KjIc?feature=share

Saturday is going to be a big day also - with Pzoom kicking off at 10am - two hours of face to face macro talk, with introductions, updates, and some more field macro discussion. Your Pzoom invitation is going to be posted over on Patreon, probably tomorrow.

Right after the Pzoom wraps up we go straight over to Tangent for another fun and challenging exploration of the 3D modeling world in our Fusion 360 discussion group for macro photographers and makers. If you have a 3D printer, or might one day buy one, you really need to come and meet the group - this is a fantastic resource for anyone trying to get a fast start in CAD/CAM. Larry Strunk knows his stuff and put a lot of work into this monthly gathering. Drop by and see what it is all about - 12:30 until 2(ish), this Saturday - here is your invitation - Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Tangent

Time: Jun 21, 2025 12:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=82319653517

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

OK - that is it for this week - I have a ton of work to get done before tomorrow. Hope to see you sometime this week!

Allan

DIY + AI = 0.0 x ZZZs

Greetings from the Bunker!

3 BH2 microscopes

It has been another busy Monday, getting ready for another busy week. But it has already been a very productive one. I am delighted to say that I am very close to finishing up the printing and ready to begin the final assembly of TEN cross polarization platforms. This feels like a very important step as it seems to have taken an age to get through all this printing. Everything has gone quite smoothly and I managed to find the time to write a detailed instruction manual for the crystal viewer. I would expect to have this batch mailed out by the end of the week, after which both my printer and I will be taking a short break before getting started on the next batch. I thought you might be interested in looking over the instruction sheet so I am posting that separately. This sheet would be very helpful to anyone who is planning to print their own viewer.

10 cross polarizers, in the making

To say I underestimated the time and cost of making these things would be a massive understatement - my printer has gone through three spools of filament in a solid week of round the clock printing. The sudden addition of huge import fees (tariff penalties charged directly back to the customer) caused a tripling of my costs for all the parts I order from China - I can’t afford to buy the same parts from a US supplier because they cost over five times as much here. Anyway, it got real expensive, real quick. But I am a man of my word and the folks that ordered this first batch of viewers will have their orders fulfilled  for the price promised.

the end product

You would think that, as the only supplier of self contained cross polarizing birefringence viewing and photography platforms on the planet (that I am aware of), I should be able to make and sell the things to make a little profit. It is testament to my limited business acumen (very limited) that the completion of my first round of sales will leave me squarely in the red - it normally takes me months to get into debt with a business venture! The viewers have turned out very nice, with all the upgrades. If you are on the list to get one, you will not be disappointed.

Former BH2 microscopes - ready to paint

The news for those awaiting completion of their Olympus microscope conversions is even better! There were two major problems hindering the completion of the four machines sitting on my desk. The first was that 3/4 of the focus blocks had badly damaged fine focus drive systems, with bent focus shafts and stripped gears. I had thought this problem was fixed when I ordered some replacement steel tubing (from China) and started printing the tiny gears that needed to be replaced. But the tubes turned out to be  4.0mm in diameter, not the 3.97mm (5/32”) that I needed - I would not have thought that an extra 0.03mm (30 microns) would have been enough to prevent a steel shaft from passing through a 40 year old bushing - but it is.

from China - $7 for 6

I found some tubing of the correct size but its walls were either too thin or two thick to properly tap them for the 3mm screw that secures them into the focus knobs. I broke all my 3mm taps trying. I could not drill out the thicker walled tubes either. None of my small bits could handle the hardened steel of the tubes. Just as I was getting desperate, the last order of Chinese tubes arrived and they were the perfect size. They fit in the bushings and had walls just the right thickness to handle the 3mm taps that arrived from China in the same shipment. So at the last moment I was able to put together 3 fully functional and perfectly straight shaft assemblies.

the culprit

But that was not the biggest issue - the real problem was that I had somehow messed up my measurements when making a drilling template for transferring the hole positions from the motor bracket to the wall of the focus block - the holes were all about 2mm away from where they needed to be for the motor bracket to clear the course focus knobs of the focus block. This was a big deal because the only solution that I could see was to reprint all four motor housings - a huge task that took 23 hours and a spool of filament. And I wasn’t even sure I could redesign the mount with sufficient accuracy to get the mounts aligned perfectly with the holes. Then this morning I had an idea. I don’t know what this is called, if it even has a name, but this printed piece was what I had come up with.

The part on the left saved my bacon!

It fits perfectly over the base of the unmodified cage and holds it in exactly the right position to clear the focus knobs while allowing me to reposition the mounting holes to a new part of the microscope body. And they work perfectly! Of all the cool gadgets I have made with this printer, this mount adapter is by far the most satisfying.

The adapter plate in position

So, with the microscopes dismantled, deep cleaned and fully reconditioned, I can finish the final assembly and get them all tested and ready for shipping in the next few days - I hope. I have learned more from these two projects than I could ever have thought possible. This kind of problem solving is why I love this part of my work so much. You should give it a try! Time to change gears and tell you about this week’s programming…

The coming week is going to be very interesting. I have been thinking a lot about how the exploding field of artificial intelligence is starting to change everything, and I mean everything. Of course, I am most interested in getting myself up to speed on how it might impact me as a photographer. I have found some new applications for this technology that have shocked even me. So I decided it was time to do an AI update for macro photographers - and before you remind me that I did this only a few months ago, I think an update is long overdue. So on Tuesday’s Macro Talk, at 8PM, I am going to let you know about a few developments that could have a hugely positive impact on us as both amateur and professional photographers. I will be introducing you to five new applications for large Language Model-based AIs and showing you how close they are to upsetting “business as usual” in the world of macro. I don’t want to spoil the fun by telling you about these things ahead of time, but make it on Tuesday, if you can. Here is a link to the stream. https://youtube.com/live/i9fl4bbIMxI?feature=share

Following on from that we are going to look a little closer into how a relatively new kind of application that uses existing technologies to create AI Assistants, could make us better photographers. It is going to be a contentious discussion, I suspect, but there is a lot to talk about and getting the questions asked is a good start. Here is your link to Macro Talk Too, Thursday at 2PM. https://youtube.com/live/o6Vur5r1zZM?feature=share

Holding to our theme for the week, I will be bringing another controversial topic to the AfterStack conversation on Saturday morning at 10AM. I will propose an entirely new approach to photographic post-production and, by extension, photographic training, This is going to be charged discussion but one that we are going to have to have sooner or later - what comes next. We already rely quite heavily on AI to help us edit our images. So what else is right around the corner, or in some cases, right here, right now? Sure to ruffle a few feathers, this discussion needs to be had and on Saturday we do just that! Here is your invitation…

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: AfterStack with Bud Perrott and Allan Walls - Episode 23

Time: May 17, 2025 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=85292399173

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

So with a lot of controversy on the horizon, let’s get into it tonight and see what has changed with machine intelligence since we last talked.

I hope you enjoyed last week’s Stereo conversation and learned enough to try your hand, wowing our celebrity judge with your stereo images! I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

Please try to make it tonight and let’s get this week of AI off to a good start!

And don’t forget to check out the instruction piece for the new crystal viewer - it is the next post after this.

One of my favorite crystals - top secret recipe

All the best,

Allan

The Robots are Coming!

Hello everyone!

It is Monday, January 27th and the beginning of another exciting week in the world of macro. Since partially resolving my computer issues, at the end of last week and with one more trip to Chicago, I have had a little time to catch up on some reading. And these days, most of my reading has been on the subject of Artificial Intelligence, particularly as it relates to macro photography and art in general. There is a lot going on and some of it is very exciting - Like China’s ChatGPT competitor - supposedly better and much cheaper than our own version. But anyway, I felt like it was time for an update and I am also going to use this opportunity to demonstrate some of the remarkable advances in ChatGPT. I have not decided on the exact programming for the two streams this week, but I will be doing a demo of the new advanced voice capabilities of ChatGPT in one or possibly both of them. This will be a lot of fun and may surprise you!

Macro talk is at 8PM on Tuesday and the link is here - https://youtube.com/live/z82lLYFOUys?feature=share

Macro Talk Too is on Thursday at 2PM and the link for that show is here - https://youtube.com/live/pRJeJNZo8Pg?feature=share

AfterStack 15 was this past Saturday but I have run into some technical problems uploading the video. I will let you know if and when I get it posted.

This coming weekend will see another Pzoom meeting - all Patreon Subscribers are invited to drop by! If you attend my Zoom gatherings but have not had a chance to introduce yourself, you are invited to do so this weekend - bring some of your images and tell us abut yourself and your macro photography (or anything else you want to tell us). This is always a lot of fun and something I really look forward to .

AK Diffuser Update

Later this week I will be meeting with Zamir Pena of AK Diffuser fame for an informal conversation to be published next week. I’m very much looking forward to this talk.

Competition

Also on the horizon is the January Competition - “Mechanisms” - deadline to enter is midnight on Friday - don’t miss the chance to enter. I am also looking for a Guest Judge - actually, I have already chosen one but am waiting for an answer. Fingers crossed!

I am changing the way I handle private lessons…

Private Lessons

I have decided it is time to update my policies regarding private teaching. I have been taking private students since this channel launched, about six years ago. I love teaching one-on-one and am very proud of the amazing work many of my students have gone on to produce. I love the work with almost the same passion that I hate the part where I have to ask for payment. As a result, I have almost never asked to be paid for my time and work. This is a terrible business practice that would surely have destroyed the channel were it not for the generosity and thoughtfulness of many of my students, who paid me anyway.

With the costs of keeping the channel operational, not to mention the rapidly rising cost of living, I have to make some changes to how I do this. The first step will be to lay out my new policy for private tutoring and explain how we are going to handle billing for my services. Private tutoring is expensive, partly because I am a decent teacher with a lot of experience, but also because my time is in very limited supply. My hourly rate for photography services in general is $200/hour, which is a little lower than that of my contemporaries. This is also my hourly rate for personal instruction. My day job (running this channel, and all that involves) takes up almost every waking hour of my week - and this is work that is not compensated. The channel has survived because of the generous support of a small group of Patreon Supporters, and the occasional donations made by other like-minded benefactors. This has never been  sufficient monthly income to support the channel but I have always been able to make up any shortfall from my own savings. But as those funds are slowly dwindling, something else is going to be needed and it is for these reasons that I have decided to create this new policy.

I am limited in the number of students I can have at any given time, and I will always give priority to my Patreon Supporters. As long as I have available teaching slots, not already taken by Patreon Supporters, I will take new students. My hourly rate is $200 for non-Patreon Supporters. My Patreon Supporters receive a 50% discount for every lesson with no limit. Additionally any Patreon Supporter will have their first monthly session discounted by the amount of their monthly donation to the channel. For example, a Patreon Supporter paying $40 per month who wishes to have two one-hour lessons each month will only be charged $60 for the first hour and $100 for the second. I think these are very attractive prices and hopefully the added discount will attract a few new Patreon subscribers to the fold.

Payment will be expected at the time of the lesson and can be made using Venmo, the CashApp, or by PayPal. I am also open to other methods of electronic payment upon request. If you are interested in private lessons but cannot manage these prices, I will continue to provide instruction to small groups of 2-3 students at the price of a single student - not ideal, but for students at about the same level, it can be a lot of fun and very effective.

Active and Retired Military

I am also starting something new - I am going to set aside two hours every month for two private tutoring sessions for active  or retired military. These sessions will be on a first come, first served basis but scheduling priority will be given to active duty and disabled veterans. I will make sure that every serviceman or servicewoman requesting a lesson will get one. If you know of anyone who might benefit from this opportunity, encourage them to contact me directly. To request a session, send me a message through the Walls-app, including your name, contact information, service branch and status, and what you are interested in learning about and I will get back to you. This invitation is not limited to the US military - if you have served or are serving anywhere, for any nation, you are eligible.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask. If you are interested in private instruction, but are not a member of Patreon, please consider joining - the website is https://www.Patreon.com/allanwallsphotography.

For those who are already part of the Patreon family - your link for Saturday’s Zoom is over on the Patreon site!

Thank you and I hope to see you at one of the upcoming Livestreams, where you will finally get to meet and talk to my personal assistant!