How to Write Portrait Prompts - Nano Banana 2

Focal length changes the shape of a head more than any adjective will. A wide lens close to a subject pushes the nose forward and stretches the sides of the face; that is why phone selfies look the way they do. Somewhere around 85mm to 135mm the proportions settle into what we read as flattering, which is why portrait photographers live there. Say it plainly — “85mm portrait lens, waist-up” — and you have fixed both the geometry of the face and roughly how much of the body is in frame.

Crop is a separate decision and worth making consciously. A tight head-and-shoulders crop is about the person; a three-quarter or full-length frame is about the person in a place, and the moment you go that wide the clothes, the posture and the room all become part of the subject and need describing. Half of the bad portraits I see are wide frames written as if they were close-ups, so the model invents the trousers and the floor.

Expression collapses to a neutral half-smile unless you write otherwise, and a neutral half-smile is the visual signature of a generated portrait. Describe an action instead of an emotion: looking off past the camera, mid-laugh with the eyes closed, chin down and eyes up, glancing back over the shoulder. Where the eyes go changes the entire read of the picture, and eye direction is one of the instructions models follow reliably.

Age, build and clothing deserve one specific phrase each rather than a pile of adjectives. “A woman in her sixties, short grey hair, in a worn denim jacket” is a person. “Beautiful elegant woman” is a stock photo of nobody.