A Scenic World

Yesterday I had a splitting headache and a chest-rattling cough, and the last thing I wanted to do was pick up my camera. So most of the day, I curled up in bed with the lights off and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” playing on the laptop. As it got closer and closer to midnight, I knew I had to take my two shots for the day, so I decided to do a TLOTR tribute shot, one that I knew would be easy for me: a macro of my eye (I know, again, right?) and a close-up of the beautiful gold letters on my friends’ deluxe box set of the DVD. The twist would be that I was going to process my eye photo to look as much like the Eye of Sauron as possible.

Because I really, REALLY didn’t feel like expounding any effort, I used only the relatively weak overhead light as my light source, which meant I needed to get as close as possible to it. So I knelt on the bed right underneath it and held the camera right next to the light. The hardest part was keeping my balance on the soft mattress and keeping my hand steady for a 1/60th of a second shot with the K200D+D-FA 100mm combo. I took a few shots and finally got one that I deemed good enough.

So this is what I started with (this is cropped down from the original):

It’s a little underexposed and not as sharp as it could be, but hey, a photo’s a photo, right? At least until we start this heavy-handed processing ;)

The first step was to convert it to a contrast-laden, highlight-pushing black-and-white:

The next step is to add some split toning. In this case, the split toning will serve as the base for the other edits made. A strong dose of mustard-yellow highlights and blood-red shadows start us off in the right direction:

Then we start with the brushes. For the first brush, I put the settings to Exposure -.6, Brightness +25, and Contrast +87 and brushed over the entire frame:

The second brush was for the iris only. You can see the parts affected here (the red color indicates the bits I brushed):

The settings were as follows:

• Exp +.80
• Brightness -75
• Contrast +100
• Clarity +100
• Color: Gold

The outcome:

I used a third brush to paint around everything but the eye to make the background black by setting the brush’s settings to Exposure -4, Brightness -200. I also added a touch in the center of the eye to get rid of the reflection from the light in the pupil:

And there you have it! The Eye of Sauron in five easy steps :)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 9:12 am and is filed under Lightroom Tutorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.