5 Best Midjourney Prompts: December 2024 (Photo Terms That Work)
Use these for photographic images in Midjourney.
This is my last post of 2024. I’m off to enjoy a bit of seasonal quality time with family and friends. My first post of 2025 will be the Sunday Rundown on January 5.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Last week, I methodically took apart misconceptions about Midjourney photography, highlighting many commonly used terms that don’t do anything at all:
But I don’t want you to think of me as a killjoy.
So for this year’s final Midjourney prompts roundup, I’ll look at five more photography terms that do work.
I tackled Midjourney photography before…
…but there’s more where that came from.
My showcase subjects are:
Rabbit
Cyclist
Cactus
Let’s go!
I recommend adding the following parameters when creating photos in Midjourney:
--style raw: This strips the default Midjourney aesthetic and makes images look less “artsy.”
--stylize 0: This minimizes additional aesthetic effects and embellishments.
Prompt #1: “Photo of [subject], bokeh”
Bokeh comes from the Japanese “boke,” which means “haze” or “blur.” It’s a camera effect that typically places a sharp, focused subject in the foreground against an unfocused background with blurry circles of light.
In Midjourney, using bokeh with subjects that imply movement (like our cyclist below) tends to add a motion blur effect to the subject itself instead of keeping it sharp.
Sample images:
Prompt #2: “GoPro photo of [subject]”
GoPro belongs to the “iconic” camera family I outlined in my last post. It’s an action camera you strap onto e.g. your head that captures close-up footage of whatever activity you’re undertaking. Midjourney will often add a fisheye lens effect and an action tilt / sense of movement, even to static subjects.
Sample images:
Prompt #3: “Photo of [subject], Lomography”
Lomography celebrates the casual use of low-fi cameras to create imperfect photos that often don’t rely on proper professional camera settings or attention to composition. The result is an amateurish look that Midjourney is surprisingly great at mimicking.
Sample images:
Prompt #4: “Photo of [subject], zoom burst”
Zoom burst is a special camera technique where you zoom in on a subject at low shutter speeds, resulting in controlled motion blur with lines emanating from a central focal point. This creates the illusion of moving towards the subject.
Sample images:
Prompt #5: “Candid photo of [subject]”
Candid photography captures the subject in a natural setting, without posing and without them necessarily being aware of the photo being taken.
Because “candid photography” emerged as a concept during the black-and-white film era, Midjourney will often return black-and-white images for this prompt.
Since candid photography is about capturing real moments and living subjects, using the term with inanimate objects (see “cactus”) might force Midjourney to improvise a natural scene around those. (Some of my results put people next to the cactus, etc.)
Sample images:
Over to you…
I always enjoy discovering how different image tools treat the same descriptors, so I suggest trying the above modifiers in other AI image models.
Want to share prompts and modifiers of your own?
Leave a comment or drop me a line at whytryai@substack.com.
Here’s every Midjourney term I ever covered in one huge visual guide:
Cactus Zoomburst FTW!!! Takes me back to the days I had a darkroom. I have a half dozen cactuses (cacti?) decorated with Christmas lights around my house rn. I don’t know why. Happy Holidays Daniel!
I really like the simplicity of "candid photo of X." It feels like those are gonna be the rare ones going forward, with everyone pretty much automatically touching up all of their photos (arguably turning a photograph into art- something designed to record something is now designed to make it look better).