lauracallsen
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Contest Finalist in Eye Beauty Photo Contest
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Contest Finalist in Contrast in Black and White Photo Contest
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cmorisset
November 18, 2013
Bravo on your creativity and style. Definitely different in a very interesting way... talented!
WayneRoss
December 02, 2013
This haunting photo reminds me of the most famous National Geographic picture ever taken. "The Afghan Girl" from June 1985....Her piercing eyes captivated millions.
It was stunning as is this!
Congrats on a fine showing!
It was stunning as is this!
Congrats on a fine showing!
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this picture in a park in Hannover,where I live, which is called "Georgengarten". It's right next to the "Herrenhäuser Gärten", which are quite well known, at least here in Germany as far as I can tell. I took a lot of pictures there in the past few years. It's a great location for portrait photography because you'll always find a place with lovely lighting.Time
It was in the middle of the day. I have to admit, that I'm not quite sure when I took this picture...I can't even remember the season, because it's a few years old and probably one of the oldest pictures I took, that I still like. I'm very picky when it comes to my own pictures, so this image really is one of the few that has a timeless feel to it concerning myself.Lighting
This was shot only by using available light. The lighting situation was pretty easy to handle, as far as I can remember it was a nice and bright, yet cloudy day, so the skin tones looked especially nice on camera even without editing. And this is also what I'm really looking for when shooting. The skin has to have a nice look to it, even without any editing just by using the available light.Equipment
I used a Nikon d 7000 and a Tamron 100mm 2.8 macro lens, which broke at the beginning of this year. I was very happy with this lens because it's very versatile. You can shoot classic macro motives as well as portraits with it. It's a bit challenging to start using it as a portrait lens, because you have to get away from your model quite a bit, but after feeling okay with this, it's really a very nice lens, even for portraits.Inspiration
I was in the park with a friend of mine and we just wanted to take some pictures. After a while I had this feeling, that I already had so many similar shots, using my 50 mm 1.8. At this point I was still very unexpirienced with the 100 mm lens, so I wanted to take just a few pictures with it. I then told my friend and model to hide behind the leaves of a tree. I felt like I couldn't frame the image right, so I decided to overlay one eye with a leave and concentrate on the other. After looking on my camera screen I felt as if it wasn't good. It wasn't until I was home and tried to edit the picture, that I realized it wasn't bad at all. At this point I was only able to edit using gimp. When I think about this it almost seems unreal to me by now, that I was able to achieve such a nice look by using gimp.Editing
Upper paragraphIn my camera bag
A Nikon D 7000 , a nikkor 50mm 1.8g, nikkor 85mm 1.8g ( as a replacement for my broken macro lens) and from time to time a broken 35mm lens (no autofocus). So my gear is still very basic and in photography terms, quite affordable.Feedback
You'll defiantly need a macro lens, to have a good focus on the eye. For example, the 85 mm lens I own now wouldn't be ideal for this because it would be to close to the model, for the lens to focus. And when I comes to editing, don't be afraid to go dark and to pull the focus to the eye. You can do this with a vignette. This is actually one of my top tools when it comes to really getting the focus right. I'm doing this by using the gradiation curves and a layer mask. I also rarely set the opacity to 100%. For the motive: Find yourself someone with beautiful eyes.If you want to achieve a nice contrast, it'd be probably easier to take an image like this with someone who has light eyes. The model in this picture has actually extremely light blue eyes.