How to photograph a reflection in an eye

jmeyer | Photography Tips | Portraits | 07/11/2014 00:01am

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Discover how to photograph a reflection in an eye ball with this simple step-by-step tutorial!

This is a quick and easy photo project that only takes minutes to shoot, but produces amazing results. If you’ve ever taken macro shots of eyes before you’ll know how much fun it is, but you can take things a step further by including a reflection of a local landmark.

Not only will this result in a more visually striking image, but if you choose a landmark that’s got some personal significance to your subject, you’ll end up with something that is also much more personal and intimate, not to mention more interesting.

The trick is to choose a landmark with a very distinctive shape, and ideally to set it against a brighter sky, as this will make for clearer, more recognisable reflections.

If the sky is blue, so much the better. Here we chose to capture a reflection of Beckford’s Towernear Bath.

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How to set up your camera to photograph a reflection in an eye

01 Get up close
A macro lens is essential for this project. We used Nikon’s 105mm f/2.8 Micro, which gives one-to-one magnification. This means we could focus close enough to fill the frame with an object the size of our camera’s sensor, which is roughly the size of someone’s eye!

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02 Set your aperture
Next, set your camera to aperture-priority mode and decide on an aperture; something like f/13 should do the trick. Just ensure this gives you a shutter speed fast enough to shoot handheld – if it doesn’t, raise the ISO to 200 or 400 to enable a faster shutter speed.