Don't it Make my Brown Eyes Blue?

[steepholm]

I've a feeling I may have posted on this subject before - but maybe that was just in my head, where the Voices keep up a lively debate on all the trivia of the day...

When I was small, I knew that I had brown eyes. Certainly that's what was said in my family. My mother and I were left-handed and brown-eyed, my father and brother were right-handed and blue-eyed. That kind of symmetry appealed at the time. All the same, I assume I occasionally thought to carry out an empirical cross-check and look in the mirror, and nothing I saw there made me question the received opinion. I think it wasn't until I was at college that someone who had taken to staring into my eyes a lot happened to mention that they were actually hazel-green. Looking more closely, I saw that they were indeed - although there was also some dark brown there still, and even a fleck or two of blue, and yellow, and slate-grey.

Ever since then, I've not know what colour my eyes are. If I had to fill in a tick-box form describing them, I simply would not know what to say.

As an experiment, I just took three pictures of my left eye, about a minute apart: under artificial light, in bright sunlight, and indoors in natural light.






How would you describe this eye, in terms of colour? (Its fellow is similar.) I thought of doing this as a poll, but I don't want to make this into a leading question.

Comments

[kalypso]

I'd probably go with the eye-gazer and say hazel - though as you say there are flecks of all sorts of colour in an iris so I don't think there's necessarily a single answer. I was brought up believing my eyes were blue, like my mother's, but as I grew up I realised my shade was nothing like hers, and I now describe it as grey, though as it approaches the pupil it's almost green with flecks of yellow and brown. (A smaller image than yours appears in my icon - I was looking towards the sun to maximise the iris, which is why the eye looks rather angry!)

The following is closer to your scale:

[steepholm]

That looks pretty similar to mine!

[cmcmck]

Funny thing- I had my optician check this weekend. All fine apart from needing slightly stronger reading glasses (incipient poor old buggerdom sneaking up on me :o) but the optician, who was new to me, said that I have the most darkly pigmented brown eyes she'd ever seen.

The hub admits it was the eyes that turned him on when we first met (they're big'uns too :o)

[steepholm]

That'll be the Roma...

[cmcmck]

That would certainly be my guess, although it could also be the Breton or lowland Scottish Celtic!