How a trip to Australia led to a new business creating art out of photographing people's eyes
They say the eyes are the window to the soul – well if that is the case Julie and John Howarth’s Vizualeyes business is on to a winner. The couple first came across the concept of taking high resolution magnified images of people’s eyes and turning them into works of art while visiting their son in Perth, Australia.
“We were in Freemantle in 2019 and saw all these crowds queuing outside a shop and wondered what was going on,” says John. “It turned out that people were getting photographs of their irises done. We’d never seen it before and we thought it was brilliant and decided to get ours done. We’d never seen anything like it in the UK and we asked if they had every thought about franchises, but they hadn’t."
When they returned to the UK they looked for a photographer in Whitby who might be interested in being involved. That was in March 2020 and then the world went into lockdown.
"We had met up with photographer Chris Evans who was interested," says John who up until now had never run a photography business being more into hospitality having run a number of fish and chip restaurants and pubs in South Yorkshire and London. They also run a children’s nursery in South Yorkshire.
The couple and Chris spent lockdown researching the technology and practising the editing skills they would need once they could open their shop then named Eyemazing Whitby, which they did in 2022.
Using state-of-the-art technology and magnification techniques allows them to create the high-resolution images of a customers irises, showcasing the intricate patterns and colour.
"Some people are amazed by the photographs, others can’t quite work out what they are,” says John.
“There are other companies that have come in since we started, but we were the first in the UK. We keep the true iris picture of the eye to every detail and it is all edited manually not by computer. We are as close to your actually eye as you can get,” says Julie.
Once Chris has taken the picture of the iris in the special light box to cut out all of the light while the customer rests their chin on a special rest –similar to the opticians - Julie and John work their magic in the special editing suite which they have recently opened in the upstairs of their Whitby premises.
“We need the editing room as we are opening a shop in Leeds as well,” says John. The new Vizualeyes – the business was rebranded earlier this year after a rival company with a similar name sent them a cease and desist notice – will be in the historic Corn Exchange in the city centre from October.
“We are really trying to get people to work for us who are really into photography that might not be able to afford their own business so we will more or less put them in charge, let them take on the photographic side of the business but not having to put so much money in to start a business up but with all the editing coming back to us in Whitby," says John.
“This means we keep the consistency which is really important to us,” adds Julie.
They can fuse two different people’s irises together, and even entire families.
"Obviously it does look better if people have different coloured eyes,” says Julie, who wears a necklace of a picture of her and John’s eyes fused together.
As well as jewellery they can print onto canvas and acrylic and they have plans for the technology. “We would like to look at possibly using this technology to see if there is away of using a digital photograph of a loved one’s eyes who may be terminally ill and not have long left to live,” says Julie. “Sadly Chris's dad died before we had opened the shop and once someone died it is no longer possible to photograph their eyes and he has already regretted that so between us we are looking at a way of developing this s it would be a lovely thing to be able to do.”
It might sound like a very high tech state of the art idea, but as Julie explains sending pictures of eyes goes back along way in Whitby. In 1785, Prince George of Wales, sent a love letter with a painting of just of one of his eyes to his sweetheart, Maria Anne Fitzherbert. Eye miniatures, also known as lover’s eyes, cropped up across Britain around 1785 and were in trend for more than 50 years.
While many of Vizualeyes’ customers are engaged or married couples – some like to have their wedding photograph put in the centre of the picture where the pupil should be– John says it is also very popular with families.
"We are really trying to get four generations of one family together, but really we like to photograph children from five upwards as they need to be able to keep their head still. "We did have a set of grandparents come in and they are their eyes, their children and grand children done. They were in the middle in a link and then all the children and grandchildren were round the outside," says Julie.
They also had a lady come into the shop who was blind in one eye. “It was probably one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen,” says Julie. “It was like a moon. She was so pleased with it. We’ve also had people who have had accidents and there eyes were damaged and they wanted to see what is in there.
"One of the best ones were have had was a guy who came in and said he eyes were boring. And when we did his eye it was like a complete snakeskin – it as the most amazing thing.”
John would love to be able to photograph pets, in particular dogs as there eye are so interesting, but he hasn’t come up with a way of keeping their heads still enough to take the photograph and also dogs eyes are slightly more concave – so that is very much work in progress, although some people have had picture of their dogs added to the photograph of their eye.
“Because we edit on site manually we can pretty much to anything people want,” says Julie. “We also send the image to them digitally so they can come back at a later date and add to it. So like our son has had one with his son, but they have just had a new baby so when he is old enough he can be added as well. and redone as the family grows.”