Something was bothering me about this image, but it took me a long time to figure out exactly what.
Finally I realized the problem: this image screams "blind spider" to me.
The reason is that, without retouching, by far the most likely way to get this image would be for the surfaces of the eyes to be matte.
But then the retinas of the spider would see only the average light intensity, no image, hence a (nearly) blind spider.
For a moment, I hoped that after figuring out the issue I would like the image better. Alas, when I come back to it the image still bothers me because the implication of matte corneas is so strong.
You may get some good ideas by taking a careful read through
Reflections of reality (in the eyes of a jumping spider)".
The key to a real reflection that does not produce the "artificial pupil" effect is to use a large diffuser that is not clipped by the circular edge of the objective.
In the first post of that thread, my favorite appearance is the one shown in row 2, column 1 of the matrix of examples.
However, in the spirit of
synthetic reflections, you might be more interested in the approach mentioned much farther down in the thread, where it says that:
in spherical panorama photography, there's a trick commonly used to hide the tripod head -- just replace it with a reduced copy of the rest of the panorama, properly warped to imitate a shiny ball. Some variation of that technique could probably be used to generate a realistic reflection to stick into the spider's eye, if one were inclined to go that direction
By using a sharp scene, properly mapped as if seen in a mirror ball of appropriate diameter, and darkened to correspond with about 5-10% reflection, I bet you could produce a very nice fake eye.
Retaining the reflections of the eyelashes will be tricky...
--Rik
