Hi Friends,

I used to hate my own portfolio. Not the photos. The keywords. I wanted to get more new work uploaded and actually selling again — not sit there manually tagging 80 files after every shoot. The shoot took two hours, the metadata took four. So in January I built a small AI test to see if I could fix it. I now run it on every folder before I open my upload queue.

My Journey Towards Financial Freedom 🤑

I've been shooting stock since 2003. iStockphoto first, then Getty exclusively. I was 24, studying medicine in Kyiv, and stock income was paying for everything — taxis to the hospital at 7:30am in -25°C while my classmates took the bus, decent camera gear, travel between countries. It was a good life.

Note to younger DrRave : I wish I'd saved more. Invest your income, kids. Seriously. Should have bought some Apple stocks then 😉.

That hunger I had back then was real. Constant shooting, constant uploading, growing income. What eventually killed my momentum wasn't losing the love for photography — I still love shooting, still love editing. What killed it was the part nobody talks about: writing titles, descriptions, and keywords for every single file. Every. Single. One.

Tools like DeepMeta/bulk edit made it faster. Still took ages. Pure friction, every time.

In January I did something about it.

I built a simple test — point Claude's vision AI at a small-resolution version of my images and generate the title, description and keywords automatically. First results were better than I expected. Locations, people, emotions, context — it nailed all of it. The keywords were the problem. Getty and Adobe Stock use specific controlled vocabularies. The AI was generating good keywords, but they weren't matching the exact terms the platforms expected, which meant I still had to manually select from dropdown options after every upload. That defeated the purpose.

So I spent weeks narrowing it down. Training the system with precise, platform-specific keywords. The kind that appear in Getty's and Adobe's actual databases — not generic tags. Eventually I had it. Keywords that required zero manual correction after upload. The AI would generate them, they'd match the platform vocabulary exactly, and I could move straight to submitting.

The final setup: Claude API at roughly $0.01 per image. Sends a small res compressed version only — the original file never leaves your machine, nothing goes to any third-party server. The app writes the title, description and keywords directly into the file as IPTC metadata. No extra files, no copy-pasting, no manual tagging. Just upload and submit. What used to take me 3–4 hours after a shoot now takes minutes. I've gotten so confident in the results that I don't even check the keywords anymore. It just works.

The proof is in the numbers. I've never had so many new files sell in the same month they were uploaded — not since 2004. That's not a coincidence.

In April I added video support. The app pulls 4 frames from each video clip, analyses them across the timeline to capture movement and action, and generates a CSV file for all your video files. IPTC doesn't work for video uploads, so CSV was the solution. Most platforms accept it — Getty via DeepMeta, drag and drop your clips with the CSV, done. If not, you can always copy data from csv to the input forms.

The Product 📦

Last month I turned it into a proper app that any stock photographer or videographer can download and use. It's called ShotMeta. One-time purchase, no subscription. Yes — I'm selling you something. But this newsletter has always been about financial freedom and passive income, and that's exactly what this is.

Find the friction in your own workflow. Use the tools available. Build the fix. You might be able to sell it too — I'd genuinely love to see it if you do.

The shoot was always the easy part. I just finally automated the rest.

What I Found Interesting 👌

🎥 How I'm editing scripted videos in Davinci Resolve: A simple script within Resolve helps me create my rough cut in minutes, so that I can spend my time adding my creative touches instead of reaching a point where I just want to be done with the video.

🔴 DaVinci Resolve 21: If you haven't upgraded yet, do it — the new AI-assisted features alone are worth the update. The free version also has some interesting upgrades.

ShotMeta is at drrave.com/tools/shotmeta — $29, one-time, no subscription. It's what I run on every shoot before I open my upload queue.

More than 20 photographers and videographers are already using it. Small number. Real start.

Until next time — keep creating and keep chasing. ☕

Dr Rave