Images in Podcast 61

[jjeling]

Ok. I just finished listening to my first podcast, EVER. Thanks Marko, Ive popped my podcast cherry, and it was with you! Anyways, having never seen the images of the two girls you displayed, I agree, immediatly understood it as a great image. The eyes are so captivating and intense it is almost impossible to look away from them. My question, is how can you get eyes to seemingly explode out of the picture like that. There are a few individuals I know with eyes like this and would love to get a few candids of them but have not tried because I have not figured it out. It seems like it is done more in PP by toning the rest of the picture down and bumping the saturation up, but that has never worked for me. My question to the rest the photography.ca forum world, How is this done?

[kat]

I remember seeing that image as a girl..National Geographic. It's one of those images that, for me, will go down in time. I also love the fact that they went back to capture her years later.

Great question.

[Ben H]

JJ - Eye retouching can be a complex business. If you have a KelbyTraining subs (always worth it) you should watch the David Cuerdon beauty retouching videos, at least the parts about the eye, to give you a good overview and some details as to the kind of approaches that you can take with the eyes in PP to bring them out.

In the main, I will not go as far as he does, but I will white up the eyes, bring up the brightness and saturation a little, remove any blemishes and so on.

David basically rebuilds the eyes in post for the most dramatic effects - fun to do as well, although I'm not into quite so high-fashion retouching, personally...

[Marko]

I'm glad I was your first JJ

Also to make the eyes sing, the eyes should be properly lit which is obviously the case here. Look at those irises, they are FULL of light, soft light; no accident. The first image is something special, it's an icon for many; the gaze is absolutely haunting and the eye-colour is unusually striking, especially for a girl with that complexion. But even the second image shows more natural looking eyes that still sing, due in large part to the once again soft and well chosen lighting.