The Mirror and the Brush: A Journey into AI and Imagination

There is a world inside my head that is vivid, chaotic, and endlessly shifting. For as long as I can remember, I have carried images in my mind—landscapes that don’t exist, colors I can’t quite name, and stories that play out in silence. The challenge has always been translation. How do I get what is in here to appear out there?

This is where I find myself today, staring into the digital abyss of Artificial Intelligence, specifically tools like Gemini, and asking: Is this a replacement for my creativity, or is it the ultimate lens?

Beyond the Pixel: Why I’m Partnering with Gemini to Free My Creativity

I still remember the first time I opened Photoshop as a teenager. The interface was gray and intimidating, a cockpit of buttons and sliders I didn’t understand yet. But the moment I learned what layers were—and the magic of the clone stamp tool—I was hooked.

For years, that was my sanctuary. I loved the feeling of manual control, of zooming in to 300% to perfect a mask, or spending hours adjusting curves to get the lighting just right. There is a specific kind of satisfaction in pixel-perfect manipulation.

The Wall of Limitation

But as much as I loved the process, there was always a ceiling.

Sometimes, my technical skills couldn’t keep up with my imagination. I could visualize a surreal landscape or a complex composite in my head, but executing it required hours of tedious stock photo hunting and painstaking blending. Other times, the limitation was simply time. I had a hundred ideas, but only enough energy to execute one.

The tool that empowered me was also, in a way, tethering me. I was limited by what I could manually draw, select, or photograph.

A New Creative Partner

That is why I’ve decided to start a new experiment. I want to see what happens when I stop treating software as a canvas and start treating it as a collaborator.

Coco Brock

The idea

I’ve had this brand name rattling around in my head for a while: Coco Brock. It sounds catchy, a little mysterious, and definitely cool.

I decided to stop wondering and start building. I wanted to run a full-scale ad campaign experiment—from mood boards to product placement—but with a twist. I hired a new creative partner for the job: Gemini.

My goal was simple: See how far I could push the AI to build a cohesive visual and strategic identity for a brand that doesn’t exist

I absolutely love how AI unlocks features and possibilities that simply weren’t accessible before. It gives my imagination the freedom to bring entirely new concepts into the world.

While there are certainly limitations to what can be done right now, the future looks incredibly bright for creating images and videos with these tools. Does this mean I’ll stop my creative work in traditional photography? Probably not. There is something irreplaceable about capturing a fleeting moment in real life—a specific way of seeing things, or perhaps the ‘soul’ of a photograph, that AI just can’t imitate yet. That said, I am very interested to see where this journey leads and how AI will continue to shape my creative process in the future.