One of the great things about AI tools like ChatGPT is its ability to scan large amounts of information quickly. Way faster than we could.
It can then make recommendations based on that information. You can use this to your advantage to learn more about a skill AND tailor it to your existing situation.
Let’s take photography.
You can add in a list of all your gear (bodies, lenses, tripods, monopods, triggers, lights, diffusers, you get the idea), add in all of the reference documentation (PDFs, websites, etc.) and ask ChatGPT to give you suggestions on techniques that you can try with the gear that you have.
This approach will, theoretically, leave out the things that you can’t do because you don’t have the right setup (i.e., you want to learn snowflake macro photography, but you only have a 600mm lens).
This will take some trial and error, but here is a sample prompt to get you started -
You are a photography expert with extensive textbook knowledge and also 25 years of practical experience.
I would like you to recommend photography techniques I might enjoy that I can try with my existing equipment.
The following lists are below: [existing equipment, reference documentation, known techniques that I enjoy, known techniques that I do not enjoy]
Use the information from these lists as context for your recommendations Output a bulleted list.
Keep in mind that you can provide as much or as little information as you’d like. More context usually leads to better results, but it also takes more time. If this is something that you will come back to often, you can make a custom GPT or write this out somewhere so you can copy and paste it in.