05 · Casual intimacy
The Webcam Selfie
Deliberately imperfect. A slight frame tilt, front-left screen light and a face too close to the lens, which is the grammar of a real photo taken by the person in it.
- 4:5 vertical
- Bracketed tokens
- Warm indoor light
- Deliberate imperfection
Why it works
Most prompts fail by asking for perfection. This one asks for the artefacts of an actual camera phone: the tilt, the closeness, the flat frontal light of a screen. It also uses bracketed tokens as instructions to the model rather than as content, which is a lighter-touch alternative to the hash token system in The Paddock and easier to hand to a client.
Swap these first
cream-coloured hoodie
grey marl crewneck, oversized denim jacket, white bath towel
warm gray-beige wall
cluttered bedroom, car interior at night, cafe window
winged eyeliner and dusty-pink lips
bare skin, smudged liner, high-gloss editorial makeup
A photorealistic close-up portrait of [UPLOADED SUBJECT] filling almost the entire frame. Their head is slightly tilted to the side, with their cheek resting against their shoulder and partially hidden inside the long cream-colored sleeve of a hoodie. [PRESERVE THE UPLOADED SUBJECT'S HAIR OR HEAD DETAILS], falling freely along the left side of their face and covering one eye. On the visible side of their face, preserve the uploaded subject's identity and defining facial features while applying soft makeup: laminated brows, a sharp elongated black winged eyeliner that extends the shape of the eye, matte dusty-pink lips, and a calm, slightly pouting expression. They look directly into the camera, with visible eyelashes.
A long zip-up hoodie over the one shoulder. The composition is intimate and casual, resembling a webcam selfie. The frame has a slight tilt, and the face is positioned very close to the lens. Focus is sharp on the visible eye, lips, hair texture, and the thick cream-colored fabric of the sleeve, while the background fades into a soft blur. Behind them is a simple warm gray-beige wall with no visible details. Warm indoor and screen lighting from the front-left creates soft highlights on the skin and hair. The contrast is moderate, and the color palette is muted, featuring black, beige-gray, and dusty pink tones. The overall image should preserve the authentic feeling of a selfie photograph.The prompt is free to copy, change and use commercially, client work included, and whatever you generate with it is yours. Please do not resell the prompt text itself as a product, and do not reuse or redistribute the frame above: that one is my own character and stays mine.
What this is part of
The hard part was never writing the prompt.
It is the twenty minutes you lose every time you need one and start from a blank box. Then the second twenty, when you cannot find the version that worked last month. Then the third, explaining to someone else why their output does not match yours.
That is the problem I am building Transora to solve. Not a bigger pile of prompts, but a place where the one you need is already tested, already labelled with the models it holds up on, and already parameterised so you can change the outfit without breaking the lighting.
These seven, the fifty style transfers, and the character-swap library are the beginning of what goes in it. On 28 August they stop being a page you read and become a shelf you pull from. The first fifty in get early access and a price locked for good.