Cinematic golden hour portrait
A warm, atmospheric portrait with soft rim lighting and shallow depth of field. Reliable for character shots that feel like film stills.
$ cat prompt.txt
portrait of a thoughtful woman in her thirties, soft golden hour light from a low west-facing window, warm rim light catching her hair, shallow depth of field, 85mm lens at f/1.4, gentle film grain, muted earth tones, slight blue shadows, contemplative expression looking just past the camera, cinematic editorial photography
--ar 4:5 --style raw --stylize 250$ cat notes.md
The trick with Midjourney portraits is committing to specific photographic language — focal length, aperture, light direction, tone — rather than describing a feeling. "Cinematic" alone produces generic results; "85mm at f/1.4 with warm rim light from a low west-facing window" gives the model concrete visual decisions to make.
The --style raw flag is essential for portraiture in v7. Without it, Midjourney's default aesthetic over-stylizes faces in ways that drift toward illustration. With it, you get something closer to actual photography. --stylize 250 is a moderate setting — go lower for more documentary realism, higher for more painterly results.