I was commissioned to style and shoot some Halloween content for Albertsons (the grocery store company that also owns Safeway) featuring their O Organics line. This was my second time being hired by Albertsons to make and capture food art for them, and I love working with them because they ask me to include more human elements the photos (for example, hands-in-frame shots) than I usually include in the content on my own account and this challenges me to set up scenes differently and try different camera angles than my standard flatlay style that I’ve become known for.

For this shoot, they also asked me if it would be possible to add a spooky foggy effect to some of the photos. Actually, they originally asked if it was possible for me to use dry ice in the photoshoot. However, I was nervous about the idea of shooting this dynamic element whose movement I wouldn’t fully be able to control—this is why I am a food photographer and not an event photographer! So instead, I asked them if they would be okay with me editing the spooky fog/mist effect into the photos and fortunately, they trusted me to do what I thought was best to achieve that mysterious Halloween vibe!

I had recently learned about the AI editing tools on Canva from my friend Anisa, The Wonky Stove. I learned how to use the Magic Edit feature from this post of hers. (I’ve since learned that I got very lucky with timing and this was a feature I was able to try for free at the time but is now behind their Pro subscription paywall.) I was able to upload my un-magical photos I’d shot, select the areas where I wanted to add spooky fog, and type a prompt to describe what I wanted to add to the photo. The AI is still in its early stages here (which I am definitely ok with!) so it didn’t immediately produce a result I wanted and instead changed up way too much of the photo. But I was able to use what I got out of the tool to then edit together the AI-altered photo and the original photo to produce exactly what I wanted. I imagine this is what movie editors do, but just at a way smaller scale. Conclusion: it was still very necessary for a skilled human (me!) to produce these photos so robots haven’t taken over my job just yet.

Here are the before-and-afters of the photos where I used this process.

Without AI

with AI

Without AI

With AI

Here are some other photos from the shoot. Fun fact: I used black electrical tape over my nails in these hands-in-frame shots to look like I had black nail polish on!