PROMPT CRAFT

Five briefs, written out.

The five image jobs people are most often asked to produce, each written as a complete brief you can paste today, with the lines that must not move already held apart from the lines left open.

THE SHORT VERSION

Five complete briefs, each one split into the lines that must not move and the lines left open.

•  Paste any of them as written. They are complete, not fragments to assemble.

•  The top group is checkable by a stranger. That is the test for whether a line belongs there.

•  The open group is where a revision lands, so keep it genuinely open rather than decorative.

•  Honest caveat: these are starting points shaped by my own work. Swap the specifics for yours, or you will produce my pictures rather than your own.

Commissioned work tends to arrive in the same five shapes. A product on a plain ground, a portrait, a room, a plate of food, and someone using the thing in a setting. I have written each of these enough times to stop improvising them, and the versions below are what I actually keep.

Each is written in two groups. The top group holds the things that have to come back identical, stated so plainly that someone who never saw the brief could check them. Underneath sits the part I am happy to have reinterpreted, which is also where the next round of notes will land.

The one people ask for most, and the one that drifts fastest, because every part of it sounds optional until the label turns away from camera.

Must not change:
 • One object only, centred, nothing else in frame.
 • Label faces camera, fully legible, not angled.
 • Background is one flat colour, no gradient, no texture.
 • Square frame, generous empty space above the object.
 • The object sits on the surface. No floating.

Open to interpretation:
 A calm, unhurried feeling. Choose the light
 direction, the surface material, and the colour
 behind it. Shadow is welcome if it stays soft.

The floating line is the one that earns its place. Left out, models will lift the object a few pixels off the surface roughly a third of the time, and nobody notices until the client does.

Faces are where drift is most visible and least forgivable, so the fixed group here is longer than it looks like it needs to be.

Must not change:
 • One person, head and shoulders, facing camera.
 • Eyes meet the lens. Both eyes fully visible.
 • Neutral expression, mouth closed.
 • Plain background, no objects behind the head.
 • Vertical frame, eyes on the upper third.

Open to interpretation:
 Warm and approachable. Choose the lighting
 setup, the background tone, and the clothing,
 as long as the neckline stays simple.

Both eyes fully visible reads as pedantic until you run it ten times. Without it you get a three-quarter turn on a good proportion of them, which is a different photograph from the one that was approved.

Interiors fail through geometry rather than styling, so almost everything fixed here is about lines and the camera rather than about taste.

Must not change:
 • Vertical lines stay vertical. No converging walls.
 • Camera at standing eye height, looking level.
 • One light source, from a window on the left.
 • Horizontal frame, the far wall roughly centred.
 • No people, no text, no screens switched on.

Open to interpretation:
 Lived in rather than staged. Choose the furniture,
 the era, the palette, and the time of day.

Vertical lines stay vertical is doing the work of an expensive lens. Without it you inherit a slight upward tilt that reads as amateur to anyone who looks at rooms for a living.

The failure here is not ugliness, it is the plastic sheen that makes everything look like a stock photograph from 2011. Most of the fixed group exists to hold that off.

Must not change:
 • One plate, one dish, no garnish that was not cooked.
 • Shot from directly above, plate fully in frame.
 • Matte surfaces. No wet gloss, no artificial shine.
 • Daylight only, soft, from one side.
 • Square frame, plate off-centre to the left.

Open to interpretation:
 Homemade rather than restaurant. Choose the dish,
 the tableware, the linen, and what sits beside it.

No garnish that was not cooked is the line that keeps a sprig of something decorative from appearing on food it has no business being near, which is the tell that gives away a generated plate fastest.

The hardest of the five, because two things now have to stay right at once: the product and the person. Hands are where it comes apart.

Must not change:
 • One person, holding or using the object.
 • The object is fully visible and unobstructed.
 • Hands are visible, complete, and correctly formed.
 • Face is turned away or cropped out of frame.
 • Horizontal frame, room to crop on both sides.

Open to interpretation:
 An ordinary weekday moment. Choose the setting,
 the time of day, the clothing, and the mood.

Face turned away or cropped is the pragmatic one. It removes the hardest thing to keep consistent across a set, and for most product work nobody needed the face anyway.

Every fixed group above runs to five lines. That is not a rule I set out to follow, it is where I keep landing. Fewer than four and something important is unstated. More than six and the picture stiffens, every round becomes a rewrite, and the model stops contributing anything you did not already have.

The other shared habit is that each list ends with the failure that specific job produces: floating, the three-quarter turn, converging walls, invented garnish, broken hands. Those lines are not general good practice. Each one is scar tissue.

For the job that is yours rather than one of these five. Paste this, then describe the picture you keep being asked for.

I will describe a kind of picture I am repeatedly asked to produce. Write it as a brief in two groups. First, must not change: exactly five lines, each one a concrete requirement a stranger could verify by looking at the result without asking my opinion. No mood words in this group. Second, open to interpretation: two or three sentences naming what I am happy to have chosen for me. Then, separately, tell me the single most likely way this specific kind of picture comes back not matching, and give me the one line I should add to prevent it. Use only what I describe. Do not invent requirements I did not state.

The last request is the one worth keeping. Anyone can list constraints. Naming the specific way a given job fails is what turns a list into a brief that survives a second round.

THE NEXT WORKING NOTE

Still finishing the constraint sheet: every checkable line I use across these five jobs collected in one place, with the failure each one prevents written beside it.

Want it when it ships? Reply with send me the constraint sheet and I will get it to you.

A QUESTION FOR YOU

Which of the five do you get asked for most?

Reply with the one that fills your week. If a sixth shape keeps coming up that is not on this list, tell me what it is and I will write that brief next.

If this was useful, forward it to someone rewriting the same brief for the fourth time.