How To Make Eyes Sparkle

Katie, author of "The Key To Taking Pictures" was one of our fun new vendors at our Spring 2012 show. You can learn more about her book on her site. Check out her tutorial below. She makes photography look easy peasy!

How to Make Eyes Sparkle. 

Kids have so much energy and personality but it's our job as photographers (and Moms!) to make that shine through in the photos we take of them. For me, the way to capture their goodness and spirit is show it through their eyes. That's why I'm going to show you how to make their eyes sparkle... First of all, as a rule of thumb always have your subject face your light source, i.e the sun or a wall reflecting the sun. This could be quite possible the most important part of achieving bright sparkly eyes so make sure you know what you're doing. (For detailed info on how to do this, it's all in my photography book.) For my up close and personal shots I almost always use my 50mm lens with a very low aperture of at least f2.8. That will give you that beautiful background blur but nice sharp eyes. Here's a picture taken straight out of the camera (SOOC):

It's a lovely picture but I just don't feel like her eyes really pop or sparkle. So the way to do that is to using the adjustment brushes in Adobe Lightroom, and "paint" in some light. On the picture above I: 1- Increased the overall brightness of the photo to +20 2- Used the exposure adjustment brush to increase the exposure (0.78) by "painting" just on the whites of the eyes and the iris'. 3-  Used the exposure adjustment brush to increase the sharpness (43) by "painting" just on the iris'. And this is what you get:

...even more beautifully sparkling eyes. 

I do this process for almost all of photos where the eyes are the focal point. Here are some examples:

And there you have it, beautiful eyes!

Feel free to stop by my blog for even more helpful photography tips, tricks and tutorials and check out my photography book written specifically for you!