Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

The catchlight, considered by many to be a sine qua non of any well-focused eye, isn't just a white spot here or there on the cornea of the eye. It's position, when in direct light, reflects the position of the light source. It should be recognized that indirect light can result in catchlights pretty much wherever they damned well please to appear, even below the equator of the globe of the eye if light is bounced up from a reflective, bright surface below the subject.

Be aware that of the light that impinges the eye and some of which then reflects therefrom as a "catchlight", some also passes through the cornea, refracting onto and brightening the iris opposite to the catchlight's position.

See the illustrations below.

And yes, I consider judicious catchlight treatment a reasonable part of post-processing of more than a few images.

C&C welcome.

Dave

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A:no pp, B: slight iris brightening, C: stronger Iris brightening

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Frank2013 Loc: San Antonio, TX. & Milwaukee, WI.

Well stated, good example. Thank you Dave.

Chuck_893 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

Absolutely! And if I may chime in, I will confess that I have been known to shamelessly clone a catchlight from one eye to the other, very discreetly, and often when it is one of those murky, amorphous catchlights from a window or from weak skylight. Those are (at least for me) pretty nigh impossible to paint, which is how I "caught" on (see what I did there? 😂 ) to cloning a catchlight from one to the other. Indeed, you have to be very judicious or it will be glaringly (gee I think I did it again 😂) obvious. You may have to adjust its size or intensity since usually the eye without the catchlight was somewhat shadowed anyway, and if the eye is in complete shadow it will just look wrong, but if there was already some catchlight it can be strengthened without looking odd.

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Here! Here!

My motto is: "There is no catchlight that can't be improved by strengthening!"

Dave

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

In example C we see the Apex as the sun and then the base of the triangle as the lighter brown. Thank you for pointing out that which was "hidden in plain sight."

Careful... UHH people prefer supernatural opinions not science.

neilds37 Loc: Port Angeles, WA

Very well stated and illustrated, witnessed by the fact I fully understand what you said...and that aint easy to do.

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Thanks, Don,
I'm glad to find that sometimes my words cut through the fog rather than making it more dense and murky!

Dave

R.G. Loc: Scotland

I hadn't even thought about iris brightening, never mind considered its relationship to catchlights. The two together add depth and life to the windows of the soul.

My own observation is that multiple catchlights never look right, and if there are multiple catchlights I'll reduce them to one, or perhaps one main one plus a smaller secondary one. I also think that the most appropriate catchlights are those in the northern hemisphere.

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Well, Coz,
After an embarrassing moment during which I imagined the Aussie and Kiwi contingent jumping all over you for disparaging their local catchlights, I realized that you meant sub-equatorial in the ocular globe sense...and set off through my archives for an example thereof. The first one I found is this scarlet ibis with a catchlight indisputably situated in the eye's Southern Hemisphere...but of course, it is holding its head upside- down!

An yes, this IS a tight crop, so let's have no egregious pixel-peeping, OK?

Best regards,

Y'r Coz in the Colonies

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R.G. Loc: Scotland

Hi, Colonial Coz. Egregious? I'll have you know that my pixel-peeping is of the highest order .

OK - perhaps "upper half" would have been more to the point and less ambiguous .

Of course your example would have to be a one-in-a-million exception - when is the upper half not the upper half......

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Sorry, Coz, the crack about "egregious pixel peeping" was not personally directed at you but at that subset of critics who take delight in outrageously obscessive attention to minuscule manifestations of technical solecisms rather than deigning to notice the creative artistic features of the work in question that do not require examination with more than the naked eye at normal viewing distance.

As for "upper" and "lower" portions of the eye: The eye, in its neutral alert position, has an anatomical equator recognized in relation to the structure of the head of the creature in which they are reasonably firmly fixed - more firmly so in birds than in other vertebrates, I might add. A bird's eyes are essentially immobile within the skull. To redirect its optical axes a bird must turn its head; it can't just glance to one side or the other keeping its head motionless.

But I digress.

The "superior" and "inferior" hemispheres of the optic globe do not change in designation regardless of the orientational postures and positions assumed by the creature's head.

er..umm.....Harrumph...!

y'r Colonial Coz'

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Thank you, Neil.
Here are a couple different highlights in the same subjects eye just minutes apart:

First, a low catchlight from the low but bright sky visible to him with his head withdrawn into his shell:,
and then a high centered catchlight when his head is cautiously extended out into the (roughly) mid-day sun.

Dave

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