Imperfection can be an opportunity in disguise. This is the case with ‘Eye See You’. If I hadn’t been observant, and studied a small detail which seemed slightly out of place, I would never have discovered the subject matter for this unusual image.
In our bedroom, there’s a small leadlight window overlooking our next-door neighbour’s deck and back yard. In fact, our house has quite a lot of lead-light work (a product of the 1940s when the house was built, I suppose). I’m a big fan of these types of windows, and love how the different textures of the glass can create a myriad of distorted shapes. I sometimes get in very close and enthusiastically peer through – not when my neighbours are relaxing on their deck of course!
On one occasion, in one of these ‘up close and personal’ moments, I started to pay particular attention to a small defect in the glass. I’d noticed it before, but hadn’t really given it a lot of thought. It was a small air bubble (check out the blue arrow in the photo above).
I started to move around in front of the window, bobbing my head up and down and from side to side, exploring this tiny bubble to see what effects I could conjure up. I was delighted to find that I could create a circular shape around the bubble itself if I positioned myself in the right spot.
Deciding that this was definitely worthy of a photo shoot, I grabbed my camera and macro lens, and started experimenting.
Many of the shots just didn’t work, but this one was special. I’d managed to capture what looked like a slightly surreal and mysterious eye… looking back at me!
For the final image, I decided to crop into the shot to exaggerate, not only the eye, but also the textures created by the glass.
My hope is that the viewer will imagine the weather-worn hide of some unidentified creature - place the ‘eye’ within a ‘body’ and bring the whole image into ‘life’.