#109: Christmas Overload

Forewarned is forearmed

A heads-up and my apologies: This is a really long post. I went on a Christmas-image creation binge and some of the results are below (thirteen, to be precise).

I started out by trying to make some skeleton Santas. I asked for a Victorian Christmas card and got Santa in a top hat. (He’s quite rakish, isn’t he?)

Next Midjourney gave me a Christmas wizard. Christmas sometimes does have an air of magic to it, so a wizard makes sense … I think.

I’ve been trying to create luminarias — paper lunch bags with lit candles inside, a New Mexican Christmas Eve tradition — for three years now. I’ve been far more successful this year than ever before. Part of the reason is that I’ve begun supplementing my use of Midjourney with other AI-image-generation services. The image above was mostly created with NightCafe.

All the services have added cobblestone roads to my Christmas images at one point or another. AI in general apparently doesn’t understand that many roads in New Mexico are … simply dirt. The cobblestones are picturesque though, so I’m not complaining.

I created the image above with several moodboards in Midjourney. It may not be an obvious Christmas picture but I like it quite a bit anyway.

I’ve unsuccessfully used Santuario de Chimayó in my prompts for three years. It was only a few weeks ago, when I ran some tests with Nano Banana Pro, that I got a credible result (above). It created perfect luminarias as well.

Covered bridges have also been extremely difficult to create with AI. The idea that they’re supposed to go over water rather than simply being near water has seemed to be a foreign one. Yet I finally had more successes than failures in recent weeks.

Ditto trains. I can’t tell you how many I’ve created that had cars at a right angle to the engine. It’s true that the train below is not-so-believable in the way it takes up the entire street … but that’s my fault. I asked for a train going through the middle of a small town. I guess I was thinking of western small towns.

I also started wondering if perhaps dragons might be a better fit for Santa than reindeer.

Especially since the occasional dragon has a red nose to light Santa’s way.

I don’t know what came over me but I even made a few images in marginally good taste.

Regardless of religious belief, my guess is that we’ll all soon be celebrating a) a few extra days off and b) a post-holiday return to a less frenzied way of life.

Please accept my best wishes for an enjoyable and safe holiday season and a happy and healthy new year.