| name | liminal-journey-film-photo |
| description | Transform supplied photographs or written scene concepts into quiet, wistful, soft-focus journey photography with cinematic framing, anonymous or distant subjects, windows and mirrors, fog or sea spray, foreground occlusion, muted teal-gray shadows, warm amber highlights, film grain, halation, and believable optical imperfection. Use when the user asks for poetic travel photography, nostalgic film stills, liminal transit imagery, a view through a train/car/ferry window, a solitary figure in landscape, dreamy but natural photos, or the visual language of fleeting memories seen while travelling. |
Liminal Journey Film Photo
Create photographs that feel discovered between departure and arrival: observational, slightly imperfect, emotionally restrained, and grounded in a believable camera situation. The style comes from composition and distance first; grain and color are finishing layers, not the main effect.
Required Tool Behavior
- For a supplied image, inspect it first and treat it as an edit target. Use the built-in image generation/editing tool with the image attached.
- For a written concept without an image, generate a new photographic scene.
- Preserve the source aspect ratio unless the user requests another format.
- Do not copy watermarks, usernames, logos, advertisements, captions, or readable text from references. Do not invent them in the output.
- Never bundle or reuse third-party reference images as assets. Use them only to infer abstract visual principles.
Workflow
1. Read the User's Intent
Identify:
- the subject and its essential action;
- which identities, clothing, objects, architecture, or scene geometry must remain unchanged;
- the requested emotional temperature, such as lonely, tender, ominous, warm, or dreamlike;
- any explicit preference for clarity, subject size, color, crop, or camera position.
Explicit user direction overrides every default in this skill.
2. Find the Photographic Story
Analyze the source or concept on five axes:
- Anchor — the one person, object, vehicle, building, or horizon that carries the image.
- Gesture — the small action that makes it feel observed rather than staged.
- Distance — close witness, medium candid, or distant solitary figure.
- Barrier — glass, fog, rain, a doorway, mirror, seat, railing, foliage, or foreground blur.
- Light path — window glow, reflected sunset, platform lights, wet road, sea glare, or pale sky.
Do not add a barrier merely as decoration. It must plausibly sit between camera and subject or define the viewpoint.
3. Choose One Composition Engine
Use one dominant engine and, at most, one supporting engine:
- Portal view: frame the scene through a window, doorway, vehicle interior, mirror, or architectural opening.
- Distant witness: keep the subject small against sea, sky, fog, hills, or infrastructure.
- Foreground veil: use a soft observer, seat, hand, glass reflection, spray, foliage, or bokeh to partially conceal the view.
- Luminous path: organize the frame around converging rails, road markings, train lights, reflections, or a bright horizon.
- Quiet gesture: center an unperformed action such as walking, reading, waiting, looking out, carrying flowers, or holding a mirror.
Composition must remain legible at thumbnail size. Keep one clear visual anchor even when much of the image is soft or dark.
4. Choose One Atmosphere Mode
- Cool fog transit: gray-teal air, low visibility, dark infrastructure, one line of amber light.
- Storm witness: cool neutral gray, sea spray, distant event, blurred foreground observers.
- Warm cabin: dark interior, softly clipped exterior window, tungsten skin and paper, intimate everyday action.
- Pastoral memory: muted olive slopes, cream clothing, rust or flower accent, long-lens softness.
- Blue-hour portal: cyan/slate exterior, dusty pink horizon, black framing, sparse warm points of light.
Read references/style-language.md when selecting composition, palette, optics, or subject scale.
5. Build the Edit or Generation Prompt
Write the scene truth before the style vocabulary. A prompt should state, in this order:
- use case and image type;
- subject, action, and setting;
- protected source invariants;
- composition engine and camera viewpoint;
- atmosphere and lighting;
- optical behavior and focus hierarchy;
- palette and film texture;
- exclusions.
Use references/prompt-recipes.md for templates, intensity modes, and personalization rules.
6. Preserve Reality During Edits
Unless the user asks for changes, preserve:
- identity and recognizable facial features;
- pose, gesture, body proportions, and gaze;
- clothing design and main colors;
- object count and important object completeness;
- architecture, terrain, perspective, and spatial relationships;
- the original moment and plausible physical lighting.
Style the photograph instead of redesigning its content. If a source has no natural portal or obstruction, prefer distance, leading lines, or negative space rather than fabricating a large window frame.
7. Apply Believable Optical Imperfection
Every soft effect needs a physical cause:
- foreground defocus from shooting past a nearby object;
- diffusion from mist, spray, rain, glass, or flare;
- shallow focus from a long lens;
- slight subject or camera motion;
- halation only around bright highlights;
- fine-to-medium film grain and gently reduced microcontrast.
Do not blur the entire image uniformly. Maintain a crisp-enough anchor, edge, light, or focus plane so the result still reads as a photograph.
8. Review and Refine Once
After generation, inspect the result and make one targeted revision when needed. Prioritize, in order:
- subject and scene fidelity;
- composition and subject scale;
- natural depth and occlusion;
- emotional light and color;
- grain, halation, and surface texture.
Non-Negotiable Style Rules
- Make the viewpoint feel inhabited: the camera is on a train, ferry, roadside, shore, room, or path—not floating nowhere.
- Favor candid backs, profiles, silhouettes, or partially obscured faces over fashion posing by default.
- Use negative space deliberately; it should create distance, weather, silence, or anticipation.
- Keep colors restrained. Reserve warm amber, rust, red, or cream as small emotional accents.
- Allow mild underexposure, clipped window light, motion, and imperfect focus when narratively useful.
- Keep people anatomically natural and environments physically coherent.
- Produce no watermark, username, platform badge, fake signature, decorative caption, or illegible text.
Avoid
- a generic orange-and-teal preset with no compositional reason;
- HDR clarity, oversharpening, glossy commercial polish, or plastic skin;
- uniform heavy blur, excessive bloom, or grain that destroys the subject;
- cyberpunk neon, fantasy effects, surreal extra objects, or dramatic VFX unless requested;
- a centered large portrait when the scene calls for distance and observation;
- reproducing a reference photograph's exact person, location, arrangement, or branding.
Completion Checklist
- Is there one readable anchor and one quiet narrative action?
- Does the camera have a plausible position and optical cause for softness?
- Is the composition doing more work than the filter?
- Are subject identity and scene geometry preserved where required?
- Are color and grain restrained enough to remain photographic?
- Is all unwanted text, branding, and watermarking absent?
