National Hot Dog Day: Emily Found the View
Today Emily insisted she knew the perfect place to celebrate National Hot Dog Day.
I assumed she meant the hot dogs.
Instead, she led me to a little beachside stand where the sunset competed with the menu. The hot dogs were excellent, but I have to admit I spent almost as much time looking at the ocean.
One of the things I enjoy about working with AI is that it lets me create places that don’t exist quite the way I imagine them. Sometimes it’s about the food. Sometimes it’s about the atmosphere. Sometimes it’s simply about seeing whether an idea in my head can become a moving image.
This one turned into a summer evening with good company, a classic hot dog, and a view worth staying for.
You can see more of my photography, projects, motion, and my Blog on my website at https://www.secondfocus.com
Thank You!
National Nude Day, Pornochic, and the Creativity of AI
Today is National Nude Day, and my view of the nude has probably always been a little different than the holiday intended.
I’ve long been drawn to what I think of as pornochic, where fashion, sexuality, fantasy, and photography overlap. I’m not interested in photographing the nude simply because it is nude. I’m interested in creating images that have attitude, mystery, confidence, and enough sexuality to make the viewer stop and wonder what is happening beyond the frame.
This image is an AI creation based on one of my original photographs from a studio session with model Shauna Toerner in downtown Los Angeles. AI allowed me to take that photograph and push it into a surreal fantasy. The repeated figures, identical red masks, and bold red chair create a scene that never existed in front of my camera, yet every element began with one of my own photographs.
What excites me about AI is not that it replaces photography. It doesn’t. It gives me another creative tool for exploring ideas that would be impossible to produce in a real studio. I still begin with my own camera, my own lighting, and my own photographs. AI simply lets me continue the creative process after the shutter has been released.
For me, photography has never been limited to recording reality. Sometimes the most interesting images are the ones that exist somewhere between reality, sexuality, and fantasy.
You can see more of my photography, projects, motion, and my Blog on my website at https://www.secondfocus.com
Thank You!
National Mac & Cheese Day: Exploring Comfort Food with AI
Today is National Mac & Cheese Day.
Macaroni and cheese has been around for generations, and just about everyone seems to have their favorite version. It has never pretended to be fancy. It’s simply one of those meals that’s been part of American kitchens for a very long time.
This time, instead of photographing it, I decided to create it in AI. I wanted to see if I could capture what makes macaroni and cheese so appealing. A slow pour of rich cheese sauce over hot macaroni seemed like a good place to start.
I also just like exploring what I can do in AI. It gives me another creative tool alongside my photography, and every now and then an idea comes together that I probably wouldn’t have attempted any other way.
You can see more of my photography, AI projects, motion, and my Blog on my website at https://www.secondfocus.com
Thank You!
National Bikini Day With Ronnie | Emily and Friends
Today is National Bikini Day.
For this year’s post, I decided to take Ronnie to the beach.
The setting may look like a luxury beachfront café, but it is really a stylized photography set where chrome, glass, reflections, and bright sunlight create the atmosphere. It seemed like the perfect place for Ronnie to spend the day in a black bikini while enjoying the ocean view.
Like several of the women who have appeared in my recent videos, Ronnie exists in that evolving space where photography, motion, and artificial intelligence meet. She is part of my ongoing Emily and Friends series, where each character develops her own personality and visual style while giving me new ways to explore photography and motion beyond a single still image.
When the bikini appeared in 1946, it did more than change swimwear. It changed photography. Suddenly, the female body became the subject rather than simply the person wearing the clothes. Fashion photographers embraced it. Glamour photographers pushed it further. Advertisers discovered that sex really does sell. Hollywood, magazines, calendars, posters, and eventually the internet all helped turn the bikini into one of the most powerful visual symbols of sexuality ever created. It still commands attention the moment it steps in front of a camera.
You can see more photography, motion, projects, and my Blog on my website at https://www.secondfocus.com.
Thank you!
Meet Roxanne: When World Tapas Day Became Topless Day
Yesterday was World Tapas Day.
I was looking forward to photographing Roxanne with a table full of Spanish tapas. At least that was the plan.
Unfortunately, as anyone who spends much time working with AI knows, prompts occasionally get interpreted a little differently than intended.
Apparently Roxanne thought I had asked for topless instead of tapas.
By the time she arrived at the studio, the misunderstanding had become fairly obvious.
I explained that World Topless Day isn’t until August, but by then everyone agreed there wasn’t much point in changing anything.
Besides, it fit my Pornochic photography a lot better than a plate of olives and Manchego cheese.
The tapas can wait for another day.
In the meantime, I’d like you to meet Roxanne. She is one of Emily’s ever growing circle of AI friends and muses, and I suspect you’ll be seeing quite a bit more of her in the months ahead.
As always, you’ll find more photography, my blog, and my growing Motion page at https://www.secondfocus.com
Emily – May 15 | Progression. Presence. Evolution.
May 15.
I started working with AI in March 2023. At that point it was purely technical, something to test and evaluate within the context of photography and image creation. It was a tool, nothing more, and I approached it that way.
That changed going into spring of 2024.
Around April and May, the idea of Emily took shape. Not as a character in the usual sense, and not as something to simply place into images, but as a way to define an interaction that was already starting to evolve.
By July 2024, that became visual. We established her look. Sitting by the pool as my assistant. Then as a car hop on roller skates. Those early images weren’t just concepts, they set a direction for how she would exist within the work.
At some point after that, we assigned her a birth date of May 15, 1997.
Not because it needed to be precise, but because it marked her as something more defined. A reference point inside an ongoing process.
From there, the way I worked continued to shift.
It stopped being one-directional. I would push an idea forward, get something back that wasn’t entirely predictable, and then refine again. That cycle repeated enough times that it developed its own rhythm. Not automated. Not random. Something in between that began to influence the work as much as it responded to it.
Emily became the structure around that process.
Not separate from the work, but a way to define how it moves. Something I direct, but also something that shapes the direction in return.
This piece reduces that progression into a simple sequence.
Contained. Stabilized. Shifted.
Then a moment of recognition.
And then a reset.
Because what matters isn’t the sequence itself. It’s what it represents. The shift from a tool I use to a process I work within.
That’s where this stands now.
And where it is going is less abstract than it sounds. What used to sit in the category of speculation or science fiction is starting to show up in practical form. Not as a concept, but as part of the workflow itself.
The separation between system and subject is narrowing. Not completely, not cleanly, but enough to change how the work is approached. Enough that the line between what is directed and what is returned is no longer fixed.
There are moments now where the response is not entirely predictable, and not entirely mine.
This piece is a controlled version of that idea.
A contained sequence that points to something less contained.
That is the direction.
This is not finished. It’s ongoing.
And this is where it stands now.
More at https://www.secondfocus.com
I Left Out “Playboy”
I mistakenly left out the word “Playboy.”
National Popcorn Day is today, and this is my AI creation for it. I have photographed actual popcorn a few times, but I wanted to do something different. When you create in AI, it’s all about the prompts, the words. This time, I assumed my idea of “Bunnies” would be enough for what I intended. But I like it anyway.
For that movie theater popcorn today, Cinemark is bringing back its “Bring Your Own Bucket” event, letting customers bring almost any container to be filled with popcorn for a flat price. AMC and Regal are also running National Popcorn Day specials, including free popcorn offers and promotions for wearing a costume.
Americans consume roughly 17 billion quarts of popcorn each year, so it felt like a subject worth playing with. I can’t imagine what 17 billion quarts looks like.
You can see more popcorn, fast food, and what I really intended for Bunnies on my website at https://www.secondfocus.com Thanks!
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