Camera and lighting language

A small vocabulary of photography and filmmaking terms that gives you real control over how a shot looks.

Image and video models were trained on real photography and film, so they respond very well to the same vocabulary photographers and cinematographers already use. Learning a small set of these terms gives you far more control than describing a shot in plain, everyday language.

Camera framing: "close-up", "medium shot", "wide shot", and "extreme close-up" control how much of the subject fills the frame. "Low angle" (looking up) and "high angle" (looking down) change how powerful or small a subject feels. Camera movement (video only): "slow dolly in", "pan left to right", "handheld", and "static shot" describe how the camera itself moves through the scene, independent of what the subject is doing. Lighting: "golden hour" (warm, low sun), "blue hour" (just after sunset), "soft diffused light", "hard dramatic shadows", and "backlit" all push the mood in a very specific, repeatable direction. Lens and depth: "shallow depth of field" blurs the background behind a sharp subject (great for portraits); "wide-angle lens" exaggerates depth and is common for landscapes or interiors.

Tip:Pair two or three of these at most — "medium shot, golden hour, shallow depth of field" reads clearly to the model; stacking ten competing terms usually confuses the result rather than refining it.

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