The Made from something: Lighting, Identity, and the Nation of Creation

We often look at our own faces in the mirror—or in selfies—and see the same things. The same angles, the same flaws, the same highlights. For a long time, I found myself stuck in a specific creative niche, looping through the same routine. I was capturing “me,” but I wasn’t exploring “me.”

This exploration has evolved into a trilogy of sorts. It started with a routine, shifted with a spark of physical light, and exploded into a “fancy nation of creation” using Adobe Photoshop’s Firefly 3 generate.

Here is how I took a true image and manipulated it into something entirely different.

I’ve been experimenting with extreme close-ups of my own face, seeing how far I can push a simple image. The process involves taking a relatively plain photo of an eye or a mouth and playing with the lighting until it transforms into something else entirely.

It’s a mix of the artificial and the real: the image is heavily stylized, but the subject remains authentic. I wanted to see if I could take a quiet, ordinary photo and make it speak a louder, more interesting language. Check out the original raw images below to see where I started.

I’ve had a blast working on this project.

I’m planning to explore these AI features much more in the future, but I wanted to share a few highlights from this session. I’m particularly happy with how the lighting turned out on the faces—it feels incredibly natural.

I also experimented with mirror reflections to create the illusion of two people from a single image. It was a fun challenge to get the composition just right!

Let me know what you think of the results.