Free pack · 3 passes + the stock line
The
Three
Passes
The three prompts that kill the slop, word for word, in the order they run. Plus the film stock line I fire after them. Every one tested before it went in here.
Free pack · 3 passes + the stock line
The three prompts that kill the slop, word for word, in the order they run. Plus the film stock line I fire after them. Every one tested before it went in here.
/The camera pass
Stop describing the image. Describe the setup that shot it. A named rig has physics: one light source, real shadow behaviour, a lens that existed.
/The imperfection pass
Kill the polish. Perfection is the tell. Real photographs carry the fingerprints of the machine that made them, so declare the flaws you want.
/The world pass
Build the place before the person. Subject-first prompts get a subject pasted on a backdrop. World-first prompts get a photograph of a place.
/Stack the stock line
One named film stock does the work of fifty style words. Run it after all three, on anything.MY SUBJECT: [who or what you're shooting]
One hard on-camera flash straight at the subject, gloss glare on skin, harsh hard-edged shadows thrown behind, slight overexposure on the highlights, shot on a 35mm point-and-shoot. The photo was taken, not made.
We ran it on a brand lookbook portrait, the kind every model page needs. Same model, same wall, one pass later. The flash throws a real shadow, the highlights clip where a real flash clips, and her skin stopped being porcelain:
[your full prompt, any subject]
Visible film grain, faint dust and micro-scratches on the lens, uneven practical light, framing a touch off-centre, no retouching, no beauty smoothing, natural skin and material texture with pores visible.
We ran it on a client packshot. The clean 3D-render look died: the light went uneven, the glass picked up real glare, and the whole frame reads like it was photographed for a magazine page, gecko included:
MY WORLD: [year + city + weather]MY SUBJECT: [one line, that's all they get] Describe only the world first: the year, the city, the weather, the light source and what the air feels like. Give the world three sentences. Then place the subject inside it in one line. The world gets more words than the person.
We gave it one line of subject and three sentences of lower Manhattan at noon. The world came back first, bleached sun, crosswalk, cabs, and she walked into it instead of being pasted on it:
Shot on CineStill 800T pushed one stop: heavy grain, halation blooming on every light source, crushed blacks, muted palette, never greyscale.
Halation is the glow real film gives lights; no filter fakes it convincingly. Camera pass sets the rig. Imperfection pass sets the texture. World pass sets the frame around both. Stack all four and you are not prompting anymore. You are directing.