How adjectives can shape your Midjourney AI photographs

I'm thankful for all the great feedback I've received on my last AI post about the progression of Midjourney the past year. Many people have asked me how to get started generating photographs so I will share with you a simple way to write prompts using adjectives to accomplish different styles. You should know before reading this that there's no best way to write your prompts. It's all up to you what structure you prefer and which hints you want to use. It does however all start with a basic prompt. Let's use this:

Portrait of blonde woman, 30 years, looking off-camera, slight smile

It produces pretty bland pictures, with different lighting and styles, and serves mostly as a way to see how Midjourney interprets the subject we're looking to create. Let's see if we can improve on this.

Styling with adjectives

In my experience the real magic in photographic generation comes when we start thinking in a bit more of a structured way about our approach. Let's consider our styling using these categories:

• Mood
• Lighting
• Setting
• Personality
• Color
• Style

I'm going to show you the result of five different prompts with different adjectives for each of these categories. You'll see that I use a delimiter of "::" between the base prompt and the styling. You don't have to do that, it just helps the Midjourney engine keep things apart. Some people write their prompts in more of a natural language way and that works equally well. But alas, here we go.

Joyful, soft, rustic, playful, warm, documentary

Portrait of blonde woman, 30 years, looking off-camera, slight smile 
:: Joyful mood, soft lighting, rustic setting, playful personality, warm color, documentary style

Somber, moody, studio, quizzical, muted, dramatic

Portrait of blonde woman, 30 years, looking off-camera, slight smile 
:: Somber mood, moody lighting, studio setting, quizzical personality, muted color, dramatic style

Romantic, golden hour, seaside, energetic, pastel, romantic

Portrait of blonde woman, 30 years, looking off-camera, slight smile 
:: Romantic mood, golden hour lighting, seaside setting, energetic personality, pastel color, romantic style

Dreamy, backlit, forest, confident, contrast, editorial

Portrait of blonde woman, 30 years, looking off-camera, slight smile 
:: Dreamy mood, backlit lighting, forest setting, confident personality, contrast color, editorial style

Serene, natural, beach, enigmatic, vibrant, surreal

Portrait of blonde woman, 30 years, looking off-camera, slight smile 
:: Serene mood, natural lighting, beach setting, enigmatic personality, vibrant color, surreal style

What these results tell us

I don't know about you but I find it fascinating that you can see how the AI interprets some of these words to mean more than we intend. The words "confident" and "dramatic" seems to make the subject older, while "playful" and "romantic" makes it younger. This tells us something about the risk of bias in AI training material, and this is before we've even scratched the surface of diversity in AI generation.

Adjective overview

Feel free to use these adjectives (I've added some more) as inspiration to your own prompts to invoke different styles and variations. You'll quickly find that getting that photo that you're satisfied with often requires you to try, try again and iterate until you've accomplished what you set out to create. Sometimes you use a technique called "additive prompting", but I'll leave that for another article if you're interested in that.

Let me know what you think of this article!