This is me, 22 years ago!
The photo was taken the day I got my very first fake eye. I didn’t get another one until I was nine. And after that, I went fifteen years without a change. So it had been a while.
But I have a new one now! I went to my ocularists in Boston today, and decided I wanted to take photos during my appointments (Joyce and Kurt probably thought I was crazy). I actually made a job profile video of the eye-making process (at an office in St. Louis) for Picture Story, but a) the video is not very good at all and b) I wasn’t a patient then.
I usually don’t like turning the camera on myself; it makes me feel like a serious egomaniac. But I really wanted to show this process the way I experience it, not the way somebody doing an actual Journalistic Story would shoot it…so l didn’t ask to go watch some parts of the process just to photograph them (if you’re curious, you can watch the bad video), because that’s not what I would do during a regular appointment. All of the photos were taken while I was sitting in my chair watching the magic happen (except the last one, which I took just outside of the office (hence the odd lighting)).
Joyce and Kurt made the new eye by building around the first one, so I went without for a while (got to walk around with a badass patch on when I went to get coffee). It is a very strange sensation, like the feeling you have when you lose a tooth and that gaping space is left behind.
They didn’t have books like “Monocular Max” when I was a kid. I feel old.
I’m still deciding how I feel about this eye.
The old one used to be a bit too small for the socket; it would get all squinty, and my glasses prescription was adjusted so that my useless left lens has a magnifier in it to make the eyes look more balanced. Now that I have a larger eye, it looks huge through my glasses (then again, I’m probably the only person who notices these things). Time to get a new prescription, I guess!
Also, the toning on a couple of these images is driving me crazy. I’ve given up for the time being, but will probably update later when I get the color balances more in sync.
Ivy! This is an awesome post, thank you for sharing this process that most of us have no clue about. Your new eye looks beautiful. And you are just as adorable now as in that first pic. <3
Sooo many questions:
So wait, your glasses were compensating for the small eye?? How do they figure out how much to magnify the lens? I’m curious as to how complicated a process that is to perform.
And does that mean you’ve had the same glasses for 15 years or that they’ve always magnified one lens?
BTW, the picture of the paints is well done. What kind of paint is it??
And too bad you didn’t have the patch on International Talk Like a Pirate Day…
Hahaha, I don’t know about the glasses process (maybe when I get that new prescription I’ll find out); they didn’t start doing that until I got older and my eyes became smaller in relation to my face. Especially the left one, because it wasn’t ‘growing.’ I’ve had these same glasses for four years.
The paints are neat! It’s hard to tell in that picture (I have some overhead shots that are better for this), but they’re powders. Very old school.
Loved this post Ivy. Also, your baby self is adorable.
Coolest blogpost of yours ever.
What a process!!!!!