Blue eye explanation - not a colorization

Zuzah

Sergeant Major
Joined
Apr 12, 2012
Location
Denmark
A Redditor recently P.M'ed me asking why I always have blue eyes in my photographs, and I wrote up a long message to him which might be of interest to you, I am partly posting it here to show why I primarily have blue eyes, and partly because I'd like to get some information on whether or not the information I've been told is actually correct or not.

The Civil War was a period of time when there was only around 31-35 million people, according to the 1860 census, accounting for mistakes. These people consisted primarily of Native Americans, some 4 million slaves, and natural born Americans. Most of these Americans consisted of Dutch, German, British, Scandinavian, and generally European people. A heavy number of European countries had blue eyes as their primary eye color even back in those days, and today with our 7 billion total people we have about a 50/50 split of blue and brown, with a small margin of green, yellow, golden, honey, whatever isn't classified as blue and brown inbetween.

The problem with this statistic is that there's 2 billion people in China and India alone (This is not accounting for South America and the Middle East), and 90% (if not more) of the population of India and China have brown eyes predominantly. Lending a large number of the human race to be favored heavily towards brown means that the countries without a predisposition to have brown eyes will have a much larger number of blue eyes than assumed before.

[Here's](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Light_Eyes_in_Europe.png) a good graph that shows the staggering amount of blue eyes in Europe, and most of the blue eyes immigrated to America back when people started settling it.

The reason a lot of people ask why there's a lot of blue eyes, is because I love eyes, they're by far my favorite feature on a human being, and when colorizing I always tend to favor a face with a nice set of clear blue eyes, and with the Civil War subjects being primarily focused on the North that didn't have much to do with 'breeding' with the slaves and the influx of mexicans and a heavy amount of Indians, you can understand how a lot of Northern generals tended to have blue eyes more-so than brown eyes, and I know a lot of Southern gentlemen went and signed up for the Union army, and rose to the rank of General.

This isn't to say everyone had blue eyes, and nobody had green eyes - It's just incredibly hard to find proper records and reliable contemporary eyewitness accounts of the appearance of people at the time. Back then, they didn't think to note someones eye color, but rather how he carried himself and how he was as a person, not the appearance so much. Unfortunately that's also why some people simply never got a photograph taken unless by the request of a family member or close friends.

Another problem we face is something called [orthochromatic emulsion](http://www.009.cd2.com/lynton_and_barnstaple_modelling/images/liveries2_img_0.jpg).

It wasn't a big issue until 1870-1880 when most of the Generals were photographed (Some of them got their photographs taken during the war, but it was incredibly silly to dispatch a General to New York or Washington to get a photograph taken by Mathew Brady in one of his studios, away from the front line), and 90% of all the Confederate photographs you see nowadays (Atleast of the higher ranking officers) are the works of Mathew Brady using the new orthochromatic process, which unfortunately dampened a lot of colors. The other photographs you see were traveling photographers in late 1861/early 1862, either photographed by someone like Alexander Gardner or Timothy O'Sullivan, predominantly, and with a traveling darkroom.

[This](http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cwpbh/03100/03106v.jpg) is a far stretch away from [this](http://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/collections/artifact/InfantryCoat/coat.jpg), wouldn't you say?

This also means that a lot of Generals either had baby-light blue eyes, or either simply dark (almost black) brown eyes, unfortunately in the case of brown eyes and the long exposure time this meant that the detail was simply not captured. [Something like this](http://www.rs.af.mil/shared/media/bio/hi_res/Cavenaugh.jpg) coupled with long exposure of maybe 20-100 seconds, and the unfortunate limitations of not only the equipment of the time, but also the process - as they relied heavily on light, anything dark would fade and become a blurry blob - this would mean brown eyes would make the subjects appear as if they were possessed by a demon, a lá Supernatural.

As mentioned earlier with the orthochromatic emulsion and generally outdated photography process, it would also turn some green-eyed folk very heavily towards the light blue side, and since I only have my own visual information to go on in most cases, and nothing contemporary, I have to guess between 3 things. 50% chance of hitting a blue eyed general, 50% chance of hitting a brown eyed general, and a small chance of hitting a green eyed general.

It becomes an issue in the end of whether or not I want to be historically accurate, or whether or not I want it to look good. Here's some examples of green-eyed generals I've done because I felt their eyes was too 'dark' in the photograph to really be blue eyed.

Edward Davis Townsend http://i5.minus.com/ii55ATWC9VtoL.jpg

Samuel B. Morse http://i1.minus.com/isa2M82OAjfID.jpg

Captain George W. Hackworth http://i1.minus.com/ibbbPK0BZian3L.jpg

President James Buchanan, who supposedly had heterochromia - which looked plausible since one eye was significantly darker than the other eye in the original B/W, even in direct sunlight http://i3.minus.com/ilwAkmUOimOF7.jpg

Here's some examples of 100% brown eyed officers verified by contemporary eyewitness accounts or simply by the fact that they have almost black eyes.

Henry Dwight Terry http://i5.minus.com/ib1GE3UF0IU6O1.jpg

Rufus Ingalls, having direct sunlight shining in to his eyes, lending to some great detail http://i7.minus.com/ifsXx4Hh4Q0mD.jpg

Henry Hobkins Sibley http://i4.minus.com/iilscRgcDzm3l.jpg

Famous ginger, William T. Sherman http://i6.minus.com/ibrPRhbOoPUOBI.jpg)

In summary, I've done lots of brown eyed people, but a multitude more blue eyed people as an aesthetic choice, but I never give someone blue eyes if I can tell that blue eyes is not even a slight possibility, not to say I haven't done so in the past when I was a newbie at this. I'm afraid to say that unless the person has any historical significance, he won't inspire the same feelings in me as seeing the clear blue-eyed gentleman right next to him.
 
Zuzah -

I agree with your analysis and tend to give eye color (when there are no historical records of what it should be) to lighter color blue and darker color brown. From a pure statistical basis though there are problems with this.

Since eye color is predominately Blue/Brown I am going to focus just on those. The parents of a child determine the color of the eyes. Each parent will carry one or two eye colors in there gene's.

Statistically only about 1 in 6 people today have blue eyes (like mine) and the only way it is guaranteed is if both parents have blue eyes.

If you look at parents eye color you will see what the combinations are:

BR = Brown, BL = Blue, each parent carries 2 genes and will pass one on to their children

As you can see by this chart I made that the chances of children having blue eyes are statistically much lower than brown eyes.

eye_color.jpg


That said there are studies that support what you said from a historical standpoint.

If you look at this link and this one you see that the percentage of blue eye children 100 years ago was greater than 50% and probably (my opinion) would have been the same or slightly higher during the Civil War.

I think it is safe to color dark color eyes brown and light color eyes blue when you do not have historical records to indicate otherwise. That said more blue eyes turning up in your colorization's surprises people today since blue is recessive and fewer people have them. 150 years ago they would not have been surprised.
 
Zuzah -

I agree with your analysis and tend to give eye color (when there are no historical records of what it should be) to lighter color blue and darker color brown. From a pure statistical basis though there are problems with this.



Thanks for supporting my viewpoint, I shall continue to spread the propaganda of the blue master race for years to come, comrade!

All jokes aside, thanks for the insight, I'll have to look through that a few times to understand it wholly. :smile:
 
All jokes aside, thanks for the insight, I'll have to look through that a few times to understand it wholly. :smile:

Basically bottom line, it appears that historically blue eyes had been the majority (although only slightly) 100 years ago and may have been a bit higher 150 years ago. It does not explain why if it is about 50/50 that so many appear to have blue eyes in the photos. I suspect that it is one of two things: Light brown eyes (that are hard to tell from blue) and/or issues with film emulsions that caused them to be lighter.

Ultimately from a colorization standpoint I always try to research hair and eye color. That is not always possible (especially for individuals not prominent in the historical record). When you don't know, I follow the same logic as you, do what the image seems to tell me, not what I want it to be. Blue just seems to be the answer, for whatever reason, more than brown in historical images.
 
Basically bottom line, it appears that historically blue eyes had been the majority (although only slightly) 100 years ago and may have been a bit higher 150 years ago. It does not explain why if it is about 50/50 that so many appear to have blue eyes in the photos. I suspect that it is one of two things: Light brown eyes (that are hard to tell from blue) and/or issues with film emulsions that caused them to be lighter.

Ultimately from a colorization standpoint I always try to research hair and eye color. That is not always possible (especially for individuals not prominent in the historical record). When you don't know, I follow the same logic as you, do what the image seems to tell me, not what I want it to be. Blue just seems to be the answer, for whatever reason, more than brown in historical images.

I think what the article doesn't take in to consideration is that America also includes South America. Y'know, Brazil, Mexico, etc - 80-90% brown eyes iirc.
 
I think what the article doesn't take in to consideration is that America also includes South America. Y'know, Brazil, Mexico, etc - 80-90% brown eyes iirc.


Ain't no 'Murican's' South of Texas or North of Maine! Yeah, we were discovered by one Italian and named for another, but we stole the name fair and square. :sneaky:

Jokes aside, I remember being very surprised growing up to find out that there was other places in the world that had American's. I also was surprised to find out that the new world and the old world was actually the same world and that both are technically the same age. Bias of childhood I guess, you think that everyone has the same experiences that you do.
 
Ain't no 'Murican's' South of Texas or North of Maine! Yeah, we were discovered by one Italian and named for another, but we stole the name fair and square. :sneaky:

Jokes aside, I remember being very surprised growing up to find out that there was other places in the world that had American's. I also was surprised to find out that the new world and the old world was actually the same world and that both are technically the same age. Bias of childhood I guess, you think that everyone has the same experiences that you do.

I remember as a kid I'd ask my mother if there was more than 14 countries. Lol.

I also remember when I didn't even know the difference between Jøder and Jyder, we live in Jylland, we're called Jyder, and we're funny enough from a Jewish family, but before I knew this I'd call myself a jew proudly saying we're from Jewland.

Kids are odd man.
 
I remember as a kid I'd ask my mother if there was more than 14 countries. Lol.

I also remember when I didn't even know the difference between Jøder and Jyder, we live in Jylland, we're called Jyder, and we're funny enough from a Jewish family, but before I knew this I'd call myself a jew proudly saying we're from Jewland.

Kids are odd man.


Reminds me of an Emo Phillips joke (3:10 - 3:35)

The Dangers of Homonyms:

[Talking to nephew] I said, OK, blow out the candles on the coleslaw. He said "I want to make a wish, I want to make a wish"​
So I grabbed him by the ankles and start spinning him and he goes "wish", "wish", "wish" and I threw him into the wall.​
Oh, I knew what he really meant, but I thought what a good time to warn him about the dangers of Homonyms!​

When I was a kid, my Dad was in Vietnam and I used to watch TV with my mom. (I was 5/6 at the time). A news report came on saying that the North Vietnamese had armed Guerrillas with machine guns and that they had video. I really thought "Why would someone give a gorilla a machine gun?" I watched the video very close and could not figure out why I did not see any gorillas at all.

For terminology sake I had to look up the terms you used. (Sorry Danish here is a pastry, not a language).

Please correct me if I'm wrong:

Jøder = Jew/Jewish
Jylland = Jutland
Jyder = Inhabitant of Jutland
 
Reminds me of an Emo Phillips joke (3:10 - 3:35)

The Dangers of Homonyms:

[Talking to nephew] I said, OK, blow out the candles on the coleslaw. He said "I want to make a wish, I want to make a wish"​
So I grabbed him by the ankles and start spinning him and he goes "wish", "wish", "wish" and I threw him into the wall.​
Oh, I knew what he really meant, but I thought what a good time to warn him about the dangers of Homonyms!​

When I was a kid, my Dad was in Vietnam and I used to watch TV with my mom. (I was 5/6 at the time). A news report came on saying that the North Vietnamese had armed Guerrillas with machine guns and that they had video. I really thought "Why would someone give a gorilla a machine gun?" I watched the video very close and could not figure out why I did not see any gorillas at all.

For terminology sake I had to look up the terms you used. (Sorry Danish here is a pastry, not a language).

Please correct me if I'm wrong:

Jøder = Jew/Jewish
Jylland = Jutland
Jyder = Inhabitant of Jutland

Precisely, yeah - and I remember the whole 'Guerilla warfare' too, who chose that word really? I understand it, but it's an odd word to choose in such a situation, lol.
 
A Redditor recently P.M'ed me asking why I always have blue eyes in my photographs, and I wrote up a long message to him which might be of interest to you, I am partly posting it here to show why I primarily have blue eyes, and partly because I'd like to get some information on whether or not the information I've been told is actually correct or not.

The Civil War was a period of time when there was only around 31-35 million people, according to the 1860 census, accounting for mistakes. These people consisted primarily of Native Americans, some 4 million slaves, and natural born Americans. Most of these Americans consisted of Dutch, German, British, Scandinavian, and generally European people. A heavy number of European countries had blue eyes as their primary eye color even back in those days, and today with our 7 billion total people we have about a 50/50 split of blue and brown, with a small margin of green, yellow, golden, honey, whatever isn't classified as blue and brown inbetween.

The problem with this statistic is that there's 2 billion people in China and India alone (This is not accounting for South America and the Middle East), and 90% (if not more) of the population of India and China have brown eyes predominantly. Lending a large number of the human race to be favored heavily towards brown means that the countries without a predisposition to have brown eyes will have a much larger number of blue eyes than assumed before.

[Here's](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Light_Eyes_in_Europe.png) a good graph that shows the staggering amount of blue eyes in Europe, and most of the blue eyes immigrated to America back when people started settling it.

The reason a lot of people ask why there's a lot of blue eyes, is because I love eyes, they're by far my favorite feature on a human being, and when colorizing I always tend to favor a face with a nice set of clear blue eyes, and with the Civil War subjects being primarily focused on the North that didn't have much to do with 'breeding' with the slaves and the influx of mexicans and a heavy amount of Indians, you can understand how a lot of Northern generals tended to have blue eyes more-so than brown eyes, and I know a lot of Southern gentlemen went and signed up for the Union army, and rose to the rank of General.

This isn't to say everyone had blue eyes, and nobody had green eyes - It's just incredibly hard to find proper records and reliable contemporary eyewitness accounts of the appearance of people at the time. Back then, they didn't think to note someones eye color, but rather how he carried himself and how he was as a person, not the appearance so much. Unfortunately that's also why some people simply never got a photograph taken unless by the request of a family member or close friends.

Another problem we face is something called [orthochromatic emulsion](http://www.009.cd2.com/lynton_and_barnstaple_modelling/images/liveries2_img_0.jpg).

It wasn't a big issue until 1870-1880 when most of the Generals were photographed (Some of them got their photographs taken during the war, but it was incredibly silly to dispatch a General to New York or Washington to get a photograph taken by Mathew Brady in one of his studios, away from the front line), and 90% of all the Confederate photographs you see nowadays (Atleast of the higher ranking officers) are the works of Mathew Brady using the new orthochromatic process, which unfortunately dampened a lot of colors. The other photographs you see were traveling photographers in late 1861/early 1862, either photographed by someone like Alexander Gardner or Timothy O'Sullivan, predominantly, and with a traveling darkroom.

[This](http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cwpbh/03100/03106v.jpg) is a far stretch away from [this](http://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/collections/artifact/InfantryCoat/coat.jpg), wouldn't you say?

This also means that a lot of Generals either had baby-light blue eyes, or either simply dark (almost black) brown eyes, unfortunately in the case of brown eyes and the long exposure time this meant that the detail was simply not captured. [Something like this](http://www.rs.af.mil/shared/media/bio/hi_res/Cavenaugh.jpg) coupled with long exposure of maybe 20-100 seconds, and the unfortunate limitations of not only the equipment of the time, but also the process - as they relied heavily on light, anything dark would fade and become a blurry blob - this would mean brown eyes would make the subjects appear as if they were possessed by a demon, a lá Supernatural.

As mentioned earlier with the orthochromatic emulsion and generally outdated photography process, it would also turn some green-eyed folk very heavily towards the light blue side, and since I only have my own visual information to go on in most cases, and nothing contemporary, I have to guess between 3 things. 50% chance of hitting a blue eyed general, 50% chance of hitting a brown eyed general, and a small chance of hitting a green eyed general.

It becomes an issue in the end of whether or not I want to be historically accurate, or whether or not I want it to look good. Here's some examples of green-eyed generals I've done because I felt their eyes was too 'dark' in the photograph to really be blue eyed.

Edward Davis Townsend http://i5.minus.com/ii55ATWC9VtoL.jpg

Samuel B. Morse http://i1.minus.com/isa2M82OAjfID.jpg

Captain George W. Hackworth http://i1.minus.com/ibbbPK0BZian3L.jpg

President James Buchanan, who supposedly had heterochromia - which looked plausible since one eye was significantly darker than the other eye in the original B/W, even in direct sunlight http://i3.minus.com/ilwAkmUOimOF7.jpg

Here's some examples of 100% brown eyed officers verified by contemporary eyewitness accounts or simply by the fact that they have almost black eyes.

Henry Dwight Terry http://i5.minus.com/ib1GE3UF0IU6O1.jpg

Rufus Ingalls, having direct sunlight shining in to his eyes, lending to some great detail http://i7.minus.com/ifsXx4Hh4Q0mD.jpg

Henry Hobkins Sibley http://i4.minus.com/iilscRgcDzm3l.jpg

Famous ginger, William T. Sherman http://i6.minus.com/ibrPRhbOoPUOBI.jpg)

In summary, I've done lots of brown eyed people, but a multitude more blue eyed people as an aesthetic choice, but I never give someone blue eyes if I can tell that blue eyes is not even a slight possibility, not to say I haven't done so in the past when I was a newbie at this. I'm afraid to say that unless the person has any historical significance, he won't inspire the same feelings in me as seeing the clear blue-eyed gentleman right next to him.

My Father told me the people with BLUE EYES were a quart low... Brown eyed people were full of ..it.. My Father had brown eyes..Expired Image Removed
 
I looked into the eye color question once because of an issue with my dark, brown-eyed great grandfather who had pale, blue-eyed parents. You can probably guess what the issue was, but a genetics expert told me that eye color in a child is not as simple as people naturally think, as in the chart in post 2. It is possible for two blue-eyed people to have a brown-eyed child. Then he tried to explain it more technically and I got lost.

So we're still not sure who great granddad's parents really were.
 
I looked into the eye color question once because of an issue with my dark, brown-eyed great grandfather who had pale, blue-eyed parents. You can probably guess what the issue was, but a genetics expert told me that eye color in a child is not as simple as people naturally think, as in the chart in post 2. It is possible for two blue-eyed people to have a brown-eyed child. Then he tried to explain it more technically and I got lost.

So we're still not sure who great granddad's parents really were.


Guess I learn something new. I found this after some quick research. I suspect at some point in the near future everyone will have their DNA analyzed and we will answer a lot of questions about who are parents are (or think they are).
 
Lol, interesting man - maybe he always wanted blue eyes? :D

Mom ,my one sister and I have blue eyes,the other 6 have brown, he loved to tease, so out of 8 kids only two were a quart low... Both of my parents only cared that we were healthy and happy and had 10 fingers and toes...didn't matter what color eyes..:bounce:
 
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