The saying goes, the eyes are the window to the soul. Naturopaths say that the iris can provide hints about ongoing or future illnesses. The human iris is the perfect security key, and thus replaces passwords and fingerprint recognition, say researchers. The fact is: the human eye is something truly extraordinary. Iris photography allows every individual’s uniqueness to be captured. The iris photos are edited without distorting the structure and colour. The finished image is then printed on canvas, Alu-Dibond or acrylic glass for a high-quality and unique artwork of the “window to the soul” in large format.

Iris pictures: the iris photo is the new portrait photo

What could be more intimate and honest than a look into the eyes of another person? Portraits are made for a wide range of occasions: for souvenirs of family celebrations, weddings, christenings, births, as erotic “boudoir” shots or in the commercial context. Iris photography is the ultimate close crop since it only depicts the unique coloured part of the eye – the iris as a photo. The finished photo is edited to better highlight the uniqueness, but the structure, colour and character remain true. This makes the high-quality print of an iris photo especially suitable as a token of love for your partner, as a unique gift for the grandparents or simply as a very different family photo.

The iris: unique and (virtually) unchanging

There are 7.8 billion people on the planet – that’s more than 15 million eyes and none of them are identical. Not only is the iris of every individual unique: the left and right eyes of every person can also be clearly differentiated from each other.

The uniqueness of the eyes fascinates both romantics and scientists alike. Whether we now gaze with fondness into the eyes of our partners or our children, we are quite sure that they are unique and reflect the personality of our beloved. Doctors, too, can read a lot of information about the health of a patient from the markings, structure, pigmentation and colour shifts.

Modern scientists searching for counterfeit-proof biometric data believe they have found in the human iris what they have been looking for, since, even if the iris changes over time, these changes are negligible and barely detectable on an iris photo. Even barely distinguishable identical twins can be told quite clearly apart using iris recognition methods.

Blue, brown, green or grey: the diversity of eye colour

It is commonly accepted that there are four eye colours: blue, green, grey and brown. But this is an extreme simplification because, just as the structure in every iris is different, there is a huge diversity in the chromatic composition. This diversity is highlighted in iris photography. To understand this, a look at how the different eye colours come about is necessary.

The colour of the iris depends on the concentration of the pigment melanin. Originally, all humans had brown eyes and blue eyes came about through a genetic mutation. The huge variety of different eye colours first became possible after the appearance of this second eye colour. In Central Europe, babies almost always have blue eyes when they are born. Melanin is first produced in the course of the first year of life, meaning that the eye colour in small children can still change. The final eye colour can be blue, green, brown, grey or one of a multitude of combinations of these four colours.

The special features of iris photography

As you will already know now, the uniqueness of the iris is only apparent on close inspection. After all, it’s the tiny colour nuances and fine structures that make every iris individual. In most cases the iris image will be highly magnified to create a unique artwork of your eye.

An iris photo shoot therefore always involves detailed shots with the appropriate degree of sharpness and in a high resolution. An iris photo is thus an example of the macro genre of photography. This means: small things are photographed in such a way that they can be printed to a high quality even when blown up to large formats. This way, the details in the human eye that ordinarily go unnoticed are made visible. This extreme enlargement is what makes macro photography in general and iris photography in particular so attractive.

The required resolution of the iris photo will depend on both the size of the desired print and the selected material. As a rule of thumb, you can assume that an A3-size print requires a photo with a resolution of at least two million pixels. If the print should be larger – and this is often the case – correspondingly, the resolution will have to be greater.

Doing your own iris photography at home

Iris photography with the smart phone: Generally speaking, you can take an iris photo simply with a smart phone. To do this, you will use the phone’s main camera, since on most models the selfie-camera provides lesser picture sharpness and lower resolution. Hold the smart phone as straight and as close to the eye as possible for the shot. If your smart phone camera has a macro function, you will be able to get up very close to the iris. The eye must be open wide so that the iris isn’t partially covered by the eyelid. This will be easiest if the model tries to look surprised.

Close-up iris photography by a photographer:
If you don’t feel confident about taking the photo yourself, you can have an iris photo taken by a photographer in just a few minutes for around 50 euro. An appointment will usually last for approximately 30-45 minutes. To have the photo taken, you will rest your head on a fixture something like what you might know from an optometrist. Your eye will be illuminated for the shot – while this might become a little uncomfortable after a while, it is not harmful to the eye. The important thing is that the photographer knows their craft and gets the shots in before your eye starts to water. A teary eye would mean blurring in the images and would compromise the results.

A unique work of art: your iris photo as a high-quality print

The size in which your iris photo is produced, as well as the material on which it is printed and the process used, is purely a matter of personal taste. Canvas, aluminium and acrylic glass are just three of the high-quality forms of presentation suitable for iris photography. It is also possible to produce “iris group photos”: here, the irises of the whole family are presented together in one image.