Mood board
A collage of reference images that pins down the look of a shoot before anyone books a photographer.
See it
What it is
For a shoot, a mood board is a tight set of reference frames that answers five questions: what the light does, what the color does, who the people are and what they wear, how tight the framing is, and how the final grade feels. It is not a Pinterest pile. Twelve frames that agree with each other beat sixty pretty ones, and every frame should come with one phrase saying what you are taking from it ('this window light', 'this much empty top', 'this skin warmth').
Build it at kickoff, while disagreement is still free. Split it into sections so it can actually be executed: light references, color and grade references, casting and wardrobe, composition and crop. The same board goes to a photographer, a stylist, or an image model. Tools people really use: Figma, Are.na, PureRef, Milanote, or A4 prints taped to a wall.
The expensive mistake is boarding frames you cannot fund. A reference shot with three lights, a stylist, a location scout, and a retoucher will not happen with one person, one window, and an afternoon. Note roughly what each reference cost to make, and say out loud that the board is direction rather than a preview, or someone approves it and then asks why the final set does not include the Tokyo alley photo.
Ask AI for it
Build a shoot mood board for [subject], direction: [three adjectives]. Lay it out as a 4x3 grid on a neutral background with tight gutters, grouped into four labeled sections: light (3 frames), color and grade (3), casting and wardrobe (3), composition and crop (3). Caption every frame with one short phrase naming exactly what we take from it. Under the grid, add a strip of 6 color chips sampled from the images with hex values, and one line stating the achievable version: how many lights, what location, how many people. Exclude anything that needs a budget of [X] or a crew larger than [N].