Tallahassee, FL-based photographer Scott Holstein took portraits of people’s reflections inside their own eyes.

One day back in college, I realized I could see my reflection in my own pupil while looking into a mirror. I thought it might make a neat image so I enlisted fellow photographer Joel Fluty to endure some pretty strong off-camera flash blasts to the face. After sacrificing Joel’s vision, I determined that it was theoretically possible to photograph someone’s reflection inside their own eye, but it would not be easy to accomplish.

I recently revisited the idea with some better equipment and a handful of patient models. This was indeed a very technically difficult photo shoot. In order for the model’s face to appear properly exposed as a reflection in the pupil, I had to overexpose it with the flash equivalent of a small nuclear explosion. But for the iris to be properly exposed, the blast had to be controlled so that it lit one side of the face but did not spill over into the eye I was photographing. Then I had to light the eye I was shooting at a darker exposure so it would have detail and not be overexposed.

Read more on Scott’s blog.