When I photograph children I like for the child’s eyes to be bright and almost transparent. The second you look at the picture you are instantly drawn to the eyes.

Tips on how to achieve that…

Good light. I do most of my shoots before 10am, or late evening after 6:30pm.

(I use a 17-50mm Tamron lens but a nice 85 mm or 50mm lens works great.)

Before:

After getting the shot, edit it with Photoshop Elements 6.0. It’s the cheaper version of Photoshop. I love it!

The 1st thing I do is to lighten the photo up:

• Go to “enhance… adjust lighting… shadows and highlights.” Automatically, this lightens shadows about 25%.

• Click ok. The photo will look a bit washed out. Go back to “enhance” then to “levels.”

• Play with the 3 level tabs it brings up.. you can add more depth to the photo by adding a few more shadows or increasing a few more highlights. Have fun with it!

• Almost done.. go back to “enhance… then brightness & contrast“. Once there I usually do +4 brightness and then +7 contrast. You can add more or less if you want.. but that works for me most times.

• Last step for the eyes… open the dodge tool. I didn’t know where this was until a dear friend of mine named Jaime helped me. On the side bar of Photoshop Elements you will see a “sponge.” Its on the lower left corner at the bottom of the toolbar.

• Click the “sponge” and hold down the button. Once you do that you will have a few more options to pop up. Select the DODGE option. Looks like a blue lolly pop.

• At the top you can change your “dodge” brush… pick a circle. Then zoom up on your photograph… I normally zoom up to 100%.

• Once zoomed you can adjust the size of the brush to better fit the eye… Make sure the the dodge tool is lightening the MIDTONES. (This information will be towards the top near the brush size.) …then start clicking. You will see the eye begin to lighten up wherever you click.

Once you lighten it up to your desired amount… zoom back out and take a looksie.

All done!