I’ve had the privilege of working from home for most of the week since COVID. It’s one of those perks that makes life feel a little more manageable—especially when you’re juggling kids, schedules, and the occasional afternoon run or bike ride to clear your head.
Recently, my 12-year-old daughter was home for the day, and it fell on me to make sure she had something enriching to do. She’s wildly creative, but like most kids, she can burn through a couple days of school break, glued to a screen, before it becomes very apparent that she needs something—anything—to get her brain working again. The trouble is providing that mental stimulation while also working.
Luckily, I’m a photographer and creative director, and I happened to be in the middle of evaluating how Adobe’s generative tools in Photoshop might fit into our team’s workflow.
So the solution became—AI. Sort of.
I gave her a mixed-media photography/AI challenge. A little analog, a little digital, and a lot of “I hope this gives me blocks of uninterrupted work time.”
Her assignments:
Part One (30 minutes):
Dig through the giant bin of LEGO minifigures and find or build three characters.
Part Two (1.5–2 hours):
Write a backstory and describe a scene for each character—by hand. No computer, no shortcuts. Full imagination mode. Describe the scene in enough detail to visualize a final composition.
Part Three (45 minutes):
Pick the favorite character’s story and photograph the minifigure, thinking about perspective and lighting for the final scene. (Tiny actors, big drama.)
Part Four (1–2 hours):
Edit the photo and layer in the rest of the scene using Photoshop’s generative tools. Build the world one layer at a time.
The project ended up being a blast, and I let her direct the creative entirely. She chose the mood, the color palette, the weather, the elements in the frame—everything. My only job was handling the camera and playing production assistant to a small director with a clear, big vision.
Her final concept (heavily influenced by Pirates of the Caribbean):
A grieving husband (Adam Carver) returns to the cliff where his wife died and hears her voice carried on the wind, sweeping across the stormy ocean below.
Honestly? It turned out beautifully—moody, cinematic, and way more emotionally intense than anything I was making at age 12. Or, frankly, last week.
