The-Abyss
May, 2013Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
Haha! Well this is a photo of my own eye taken handheld, in manual focus. I was in my bathroom. Standing in front of a mirror with live view mode turned on and the screen pointed towards the mirror. Not that I could really see anything behind the camera anyway.Time
uhhhhh.....I'm pretty sure it was dark out. I'm a night owl, and I tend to do these types of things in the middle of the night. While everybody else is sleeping, I get bored, and just start experimenting.Lighting
Ah, yes. This photo is really all about the lighting. I used a Coco ring flash adapter. It's really just luck that the reflection of the flash hit perfectly around the pupal like it did. I have tried recreating this same shot on other people and haven't been able to get it to hit just right.Equipment
I believe this was done with my Sony A350 at the time with a 100mm Tamron. It right around the time I switched systems. but I'm pretty sure that was it. Oh and an on camera flash with the ring adapter.Inspiration
Bordom, HAHA! No, seriously, I've always had a thing for magnification. And eyeballs. They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. I wanted to see if I could see my soul.Editing
Yes, most of my work takes a lot of processing. I want them to be larger than life and in order to do so, you must spend a lot of time tweaking your photos. With this particular image I processed the raw files in two different ways. The first one was just my normal adjustment of sliders in Lightroom to get the details and contrast how I liked it in the eye. Once I was happy with I opened it up in photoshop. I then cross-processed the raw file just for the skin, and exported it in to photoshop. I then layered the second photo on top of the first one and masked out the eye, so just the skin was showing. The ring adapter that I used isn't as uniform as you see it here. There was a sort of swoopy shape in the area that the light entered into the ring. I had to make a circular marquee around the light and pupal, copy it onto a new layer, and mask it out. Once that was done, I burned a little bit of the shadows in the iris, and was done.In my camera bag
Well, currently I use a Nikon D610. I almost always have my Sigma 24-60mm 2.8 since I always seem to need to shoot wide. Then, I will pretty much always carry at least one flash with me. You never know when you can use some light. And before all you flash haters chew me out, I used to be one of you. By refusing to be open to new tools, you are limiting your possibilities. Try creating this image without a flash.Feedback
You want more?! I just laid out a complete road map for you! Okay, okay, the best advice I can give anyone attempting a shot like this is to have patience. It's going to take a while pointing the camera in manual focus at your own eye to get the shot. Actually, you might just be better off trying it on someone else. That advice is just about as good as the patience one.
