The Eyes Have It

In the last year I found a collection of photographs by Suren Manvelyan of animal eyes. These incredible macro shots showed both the incredibly diversity of eyes but more fascinating to me, the structure of the iris. I've always taken for granted that the iris was simply a solid color. But as I looked at the images I realized that there are gaps in the iris, there are color changes. Honestly there is nothing solid about them. 

Chimpanzee eye (very close to a human eye)

Since then I've become fascinated with my eyes. I've started checking out Jeff's eyes. I would be fascinated with other people's eyes but they might find it disconcerting when I get close enough to examine their irises in detail. And although I don't have the skills that Manvelyan has with macro shots, I've taken some images of both Jeff and my irises. 

These are mine. Note the gaps on the left side of the iris. Note the way each strand of iris goes into the dark pupil in the middle. It looks more like a hole than any solid structure.

This is Jeff's eye. Notice the color changes. Jeff has eyes that fluctuate between blue and green (at least in my mind). I love the center green surrounded by the light blue. I didn't do any color touching for this photo. 

This photo was something fun. I took a horrible shot of Jeff's eye. The flash was still on and the photo was too bright to be useful. Until I started playing with it in iPhoto. I changed the contrasts and what I have is more artistic. But even more interesting it really shows those gaps in the iris. They now show up as pure black against the white of the iris. And I love the odd color of the pupil 

Make sure you check out the rest of Suren Manvelyan's gallery here. I promise you these will be some of the most interesting and beautiful photographs that you'll see all week. I guarantee that you've never seen eyes like those photos before. They made me rethink how eyes work. I loved these last two the most (gecko above and llama below).