The Eyes Have It
I got to thinking about eyes when I was looking at the photo below taken by my friend, Monica Lord. The fellow has what I call “side eyes”. Now I happen to really like side eyes in a street photo. My question to Monica was this: Can I write a blog about side eyes? It was looking like it was going to be another one sentence blog, but Monica pointed out at least two sentences were possible. Game on.
Photos by Monica Lord. Used with permission. You can see Monica’s Instagram gallery at @almostgreennyc.
It turns out that when a human looks at a face, the first thing they look at are the eyes. This is because we are able, at some level, to discern a person’s emotions and thoughts through them. It occurs to me that I may look at eyes even more than your average person. As someone who rarely feels comfortable in group social situations, I am desperate to read eyes and body language in order to figure out what is going on. This inclination translates to my exceptional interest in eyes in a photo.
Getting back to side eyes, here is a little primer.
Sometimes, looking sideways can demonstrate annoyance or contempt. I certainly get that message in the photo below.
If someone is glancing sideways and also has a furrowed brow, it can denote suspicion or critical feelings. I have every reason to believe the group below had critical feelings about me.
A sideways glance with eyebrows up usually indicates interest or is a sign of courtship.
In other cases, glancing upward and to the side can indicate that a person is thinking.
We also read eyebrows. Flashing occurs when we arch our brows for less than one-fifth of a second. This is generally interpreted by the viewer as positive. It can signal that we are thanking someone or adding emphasis when talk. Very young babies respond to eyebrow flashing from their parents.
Winking is a way of softening what could be threatening continuous eye contact. But it also can be a bit of a suggestive greeting, like, “Hello, beautiful.” I suspect that is the case here.
When we look down, sometimes we communicate that we are embarrassed or ashamed.
When a person who is wearing full-size glasses bends their head slightly in order to look over the glasses, it can be interpreted as slightly demeaning. Perhaps that is the origin of the expression, “Looking down your nose at someone.”
Eyes are also one of the sources of disagreement in the street photography community. Some street photographers, like Eric Kim, are happy to get eye contact with their subjects. Eric’s advice is keep taking photos until you finally get eye contact. Other street photographers feel like eye contact ruins the candidness of the moment. I am in the camp that eye contact is good. If my hero is looking at me, there is a likelihood that my viewers will feel like my hero is looking at them.
A traditional street portrait with no eye contact with the photographer. It does have more story.
Good eye contact with the photographer and with you by extension.
Now for a little color theory.
Hue
Really, I thought the word hue was just an artist’s name for color. It is not. Hue has one dimension and color has three dimensions, one of which is hue.
When you look at a color, in order to determine its hue, you have to decide what is the dominant pure color. For example, navy blue and sky blue have the same hue, which is blue. This is a simple example but you can imagine that it could take a sophisticated computer to determine the hue of every one of the approximately 1,000,000 colors the human eye can see. I wonder if that has been done?
In science, hue describes the wave length of a color. Wavelengths are measured in nanometers (nm). The human eye can see wavelengths between 400-750 nm. Blues and violets have the shortest wavelengths. Red has the longest. Every hue actually contains the entire wavelength spectrum, but one wavelength will be dominant. That dominant wavelength is the color the eye will see.
In a painting, a hue is a pure pigment. It has not been lightened or darkened by the addition of a white or black pigment.
There are six hues, the Primary Colors, Secondary Colors and twelve hues if you include the Tertiary Colors.