Turning Pencil Sketches into Photographs Using MidJourney

I tried to revive some of my old ideas.

When I’m working on a serious “fine-art” photo shoot, I usually do a lot of sketching in advance. I want to try out these ideas as much as possible to filter out garbage and save time on set. Therefore my sketchbooks are filled with ideas that, for some reason, I didn’t execute.

So with the release of MidJourney version 5 earlier this week, I decided to try them and see if they could be turned into photographs, but without the hassle of organizing a proper photoshoot. The results are somewhat mixed, but be your own judge.

I scanned the sketches, uploaded them, and this is the first one:

As you can see, this is an idea from 7th August 2011. Quite old, but it feels like yesterday. Pencil sketch by the author.

It is a girl in a white dress, standing in heavy rain with the wind blowing through her hair. In the background are a landscape with grass, a bent tree, and stormy clouds. She holds a scarf or some sort of decorative fabric in her hand, and I thought it should be red.

So how did MidJourney v5 perform? At first, I left it with open hands and just said, “Turn this sketch into a photograph,” and this is what came out: