Hi Friends,

AI tools have quietly taken over the boring parts of my creative workflow — and I didn't expect it to happen this fast. I wanted to upload more images to Getty but dreaded the metadata grind. So I asked Claude to build me a local app that reads each image, generates a thumbnail, calls the Anthropic API at $0.03 per image, and writes the title, description, and keywords directly into the file metadata. Two iterations later, it does exactly what I need. Now I'm uploading 40 images a day to Getty — and the only thing left is the part I actually enjoy: shooting and editing.

My Journey Towards Financial Freedom 🤑

I had a folder full of edited images I wasn't submitting. Not because they weren't good enough, but because writing metadata for 200 files felt like a punishment. That folder is now empty.

The Claude app changed the math entirely. $0.03 per image. Two hours of back-and-forth to get the output right. Now it runs in the background while I do something else. You shoot stock? You're leaving time — and submissions — on the table if you're not exploring something similar.

The metadata app was just the start. I rebuilt my entire website DrRave.com from scratch using Next.js — clean, fast, SEO-optimised, AI-search-friendly. The whole structure took about two hours of what I'd call vibe coding: describe what you want, review, refine, repeat. I added the images and content myself. Watch YouTube videos promising a full website in five minutes? Be careful. They look great in the demo and perform terribly in the real world. Keep it simple unless your name is Apple.

The third project is something I'm calling DrRave OS — a personal dashboard that manages Getty briefs, blog posts, YouTube scripts, social posts, and this newsletter. It's early days, but the last few blog posts went through it. So did this email.

Here's what actually happened: AI didn't replace my creative judgement. It took the work I was procrastinating on and made it frictionless. That's worth paying attention to.

One more thing — some Iran clips I posted as Shorts started getting real traction. A sunset shot from the top of the Milad Tower in Tehran crossed 200k views. I only wish it wasn't the war driving people to search for it. It is an amazingly beautiful country.

What I Found Interesting 👌

📚 E-Myth Revisited — Re-reading this while scaling a business hits different; the "technician trap" lands harder when you're living it.

🔴 DaVinci Resolve / AI — I'm experimenting with using AI to generate a first cut from raw footage; early results are rough but the direction is genuinely interesting — more on this soon.

💡 Studio refresh — 3D printed pegboards, a fresh coat of paint, and an actual organisation system; sometimes the physical workspace is the bottleneck nobody talks about.

If you're grading footage in DaVinci Resolve and want your work to have a consistent, cinematic look, the Kodak 2383-Inspired Cinematic LUT pack is at shop.drrave.com — it's what I reach for on anything I'm submitting to Getty and my clieints.

Until next time — keep creating and keep chasing. ☕

Dr Rave