What is the difference between Pigeons and particles?

Particles are small points of light that drift and hang in the air. Pigeons are large, opaque and fast, and they cross the frame rather than float in it.

When should I use the Pigeons look?

For an arrival in a public square, a portrait that needs movement, or the moment somebody walks into a flock and sets it off.

How do I prompt the Pigeons look?

Ask for motion blur on the nearest birds and say the face stays visible between them. Without that you get sharp birds everywhere and a covered face.

Pigeons

Birds burst past the face, filling the frame with wings.

Run this shot

Opens a video model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.

Pigeons: Birds burst past the face, filling the frame with wings.

What it is for

Wings fill the foreground and the face appears between them. The birds turn a still portrait into one frame out of a moment that is clearly still going.

They also put something between the viewer and the subject, which makes the face feel found instead of presented.

How it works

The nearest birds sit close enough to the lens to be well out of focus, and they smear with their own speed. The ones further back stay sharper, and that difference is what builds the depth.

The face has to hold a gap. Birds cross the frame around the head more than over it, and the eyes stay visible through the gap for at least part of the shot.

Light from behind or the side catches the wing edges and lifts them off the background.

When to use it

Use it for an arrival in a square, a portrait that needs motion in it, or the moment a subject disturbs something.

Skip it when the face has to be read continuously. Anything crossing the frame covers it some of the time.

Told apart from its neighbours

Particles are small glowing points suspended in the air, and they drift. Birds are large, opaque and fast, and they cross the frame instead of hanging in it.

Judge it on scale and speed. Points of light drifting is Particles. Wings smeared by their own motion is Pigeons.

Particles

The prompt

Replace the blanks, keep the rest. Then run it on a video model.

birds bursting past <subject>, wings filling the foreground, motion blur on the nearest birds, face visible between them

Run it

What goes wrong

Every bird comes back sharp, which flattens the shot into a pattern. Say the nearest birds carry motion blur and sit out of focus.

The other failure is a covered face. Ask for the face visible between the birds, or a model puts a wing straight across the eyes.

Leave out

still birds, empty frame

Watch for

Blur the nearest birds. Sharp birds everywhere flattens the depth.

Questions

It is a portrait taken through a burst of birds, with wings filling the foreground, the nearest ones blurred by their own movement, and the face visible in the gap between them.