Just a taste

• Engine: Dall-E2

• Prompt: 35mm macro shot, a kitten licking a baby duck, studio lighting

• Sources: labs.openai.com, reddit

The previous post showed that kittens are a crowdpleaser and the feedback on reddit was quite good. So I decided to take another stab at it, and combine two baby animals in a photo real shot using professional lighting.

Together, the texture and lighting make for a beautiful image. Even though the duck's body is somewhat nonsensical and the kitten's tongue is devoid of feline trademark barbs, the composition exudes photorealism. The composition turned out to be very aesthetically pleasing as well, with the focal point being the beak licking. Duck's head and beak contrast beautifully with the dark studio background.

prompt breakdown

Once again we start simple: a kitten licking a baby duck

Already, the simple prompt shows promise. A kitten grooming a duck evokes all the right emotions. Composition and picture quality still need work. We want to get closer to the action and upgrade to a more professional look:

35mm macro shot

The difference is noticeable, picture quality has increased, we see a bokeh effect in many shots (thanks to the 35mm prompt addition) and we are closer to the subjects with increased detail level thanks to macro shot.

We'll transplant our subjects into a professional photo studio, with that classic photo studio look:

studio lighting

Now that looks much better. We see that a random dog snuck into the results, sometimes that happens. The remaining results are in the ballpark of what we are looking for, therefore we can say we have reached the final prompt. The exercise now is to regenerate the image until we find an image that is most pleasing in terms of framing, composition, detail and cuteness. It took maybe 5 generations until I found the picture featured in this article, your mileage may vary.

- Daniel