Tips and ideas to photograph eyes in portrait photography

We have heard this many times:  'the eyes are the mirror of the soul'. That is because our eyes are able to reflect our emotions and even speak without using words. Therefore, when we do a portrait, these tend to become the center of interest of our image.

In this article we want to teach you how to photograph them by giving you some general tips and ideas to immortalize them.

General tips

1. Good lighting

Beautiful natural light will make your subject's eyes pop with excellent clarity and quality. Find a position in which the protagonist feels comfortable and receives enough light to be able to focus on the eyes without problem. You can help yourself with reflectors, like Quadralite reflector, to easily direct the light in your work area.

2. Pauses

It is difficult to keep the eyes open for long periods of time. Not blinking enough may lead to irritation and red eyes. Thus, let your model take breaks from time to time. A good trick to avoid closed eyes is to ask your subject to blink just before shooting the photo. This will reduce the likelihood of it occurring at the time of the shot.

3. Manual focus

When it comes to eye photography, it is best to work with manual focus because the camera does not always highlight the part you want, but you will, if you do it manually.

4. Shoot in RAW

We recommend you shooting in RAW format in order to get the most out of your photographs. Unlike a JPG file to which the camera has applied some basic settings, with the RAW format you will be the one to make the modifications you consider necessary to achieve the final result that you were looking for. You can adjust the exposure and reduce noise, for example, or increase the intensity of the color of the eyes.

5. Necessary equipment

To highlight the eyes you will need a bright lens with a large diaphragm aperture. If you want to photograph them very closely, you may want to use a macro lens, such as the Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro for Nikon. If you do not have one, you can choose some alternatives: extension tubes or reversal ring adapters.

Another elements that will help us avoid camera shake is a tripod, to anchor our camera on it and have the greatest possible stability, and a trigger so that we do not have to touch the camera.

IDEAS

1. From up close

Macro photography is ideal to capture those textures and small details of the eyes that we cannot appreciate naturally. To take this type of photograph we recommend you using a medium focal macro lens (60-105 mm). The aperture of the diaphragm should be medium such as f /5.6 or f /8 and if we do not want the iris to be blurred we will also need to use a high shutter speed, minimum of 1/125.

2. Capturing reflections

The reflections of light in the eyes serve to give strength and life to the look. In addition, it allows you to introduce elements in the eyes that tell a story to others.

3. Through the reflection in a mirror

Mirrors are a great tool to try out new things in photography. They help you enhance your creativity, and they give unique and different results

4. Natural framing

You can highlight eyes by creating a frame that surrounds them. You can do it with fingers, plants, a mask ... The possibilities are endless!

5. Playing with the light

Experimenting with light can give you great results. Try playing with the lights and shadows to highlight the eyes.

6. Black and white

The eyes are not exclusive to color, you can also experiment with black and white. Black and white photography brings out dramatism and emotion and if the center of interest are the eyes ... then even more!

7. Respecting the Law of the Gaze

The law of the gaze is one of the main rules of photographic composition and consists of respecting the direction in which the model in our portrait looks.  This way you put emphasis on the action of looking.

8. Other types of eyes

Do not limit yourself to human eyes, if you have animals nearby, do not hesitate to portray them as well. The eyes of animals are very expressive and different depending on the species you are photographing