This is me having more fun with my daughter's fiber optic lamp. I shook the fibers around and then sat still for 2 seconds.
This is a random page I found on fiber optic lamps, in case you're not familiar with them. Since all the fibers are the same length, when you bounce them around, they create light trails that form a sphere: random fiber optic lamp page.
I tried several crops and took about 200 shots (with and without the lamp) to find one that gave me the right mood and facial expression.
What I like, aside from the blue light swirls, is that the eyes grab you and only then you notice the nose is also visible. At least, that's what happens to me each time I look at it. So while the lights appear to be an opaque globe, they really aren't.
I also like that the whites of the eyes came out whiter than everything else. That wasn't actually intentional, but came out of the dodging and sharpening. Hence the comma in the title - not blue eyes, but blue and eyes.
Editing: curves, levels, dodging the whites of the eyes to lighten them up, some more curves, yet more curves to drop the background truly to black. After cropping and scaling, I did a sharpening pass.
Statistics
Place: 26 out of 127 Avg (all users): 6.1262 Avg (commenters): 7.8000 Avg (participants): 5.8036 Avg (non-participants): 6.2467 Views since voting: 1615 Views during voting: 396 Votes: 206 Comments: 18 Favorites: 2 (view)
I'm surprised this photo didn't place at least in the top 10. You have a very good exposure, great contrast, and excellent depth of field. It took me a bit to find the nose, and that is about the only feature that I wish wasn't there. Nothing personal against your nose, but till then the picture has even more punch. Since you can't see the bridge of the nose, and the lighting accentuates the brow, could this be Neanderthal, King Kong, an Alien brooding over the earth? Or even another blue planet? Lots of interest and energy here. About the only other minor negative I see is the lower right of the picture is approaching burn-out, which draws the eye away from the rest of the composition a bit. Not bad, as it takes awhile to happen, but could be an improvement.
Hadn't noticed the nose until you mentioned it :D Very well done. I don't think light play such as this, gets enough credit anymore. It's not only a fun technique, but one that can produce the most spectacular abstracts.
Great description. I was wondering how you did this. I was beginning to think that the face was a poster or something. I noticed the nose probably on the 5th or 6th viewing which had me all the more perplexed about the execution. Great job and very creative thinking.
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