*ooof*: For a Look in Your Eyes, Armitage!

This is a mini-good-bye post from me. Hush, hush, ladies, don’t worry, I am not giving up my *ooof*ing – although I was very close to that after the flood of candids from the Wellington premiere of The World’s End. Seriously, I am not kidding! The resurgence of a beginning mullet have thrown me into turmoil. The nape curl porn, the wavy hair love, yes, I have even been caught enthusiastically welcoming the beard. Am I developing a body hair fetish? I am very worried! Especially when I think about what I am going to mention further down in the text… Signs that I have to dial back my Richarding a notch. Breathe, Guylty, breathe. Keep calm and Armitage! Even my computer needs a break, it seems, seeing that it spontaneously crashed when I was just about to delve deep into… ah well, you’ll see later. But instead I am gifting you with more than just one choice cut of RA, today – a pressie to keep me sweet in your memory 😉

And so it comes with perfect timing that I am heading off on holidays to the Fazerland today as I am posting this *ooof*. Twelve days to step back. And then back with a vengeance, I suspect, because this is what I am bringing along:

You thought I could do without my favourite eyecandy? Absolutely not! I am bringing my emergency supply of RARA, you bet.
(Click image! I uploaded it as huge as possible!)

But before the next onslaught of RARA comes your way I am turning to an old image. Oh, yes, a really old image. Well, if you can still remember the time pre-Hobbit? Yes, there was a time when RA was stubbled and butch, and the strains of a year and a half of hopping around in oversize boots and sweating in heavy padding had not yet taken their toll. And so let me take you back to an image shot in December 2010, which is slightly hidden as a single image on a page 2 in a gallery of my favourite source of RA top-shelf material, RAnet.com.

Before the madness began. Richard Armitage in December 2010, shot by Perou. Source.

After our excursion into some rather gritty b/w last week, we find ourselves faced with another *almost* monochrome image. Colour is almost absent in this shot – a white background, a white t-shirt, black hair. Only the colour of the skin, the red lips and the blue eyes pop – and boy, do they pop!!! This is a head-and-shoulders by British fashion and music photographer Perou. And pretty tame for Perou it is, who made his name with fetish photography – whips, cuffs, corset, the like. His images have a strong sharpness about them, shot with small apertures that records everything in the image with sharp detail and crystal-clear precision, and that makes for an edginess that we have not quite had with the RARAs which are characterised by a slightly softer sleekness. Or is that also a reflection on the sitter?

RA in 2010, that is the end of Spooks, and a whole mini-season of Strike Back. And thus we have Armitage reminiscent of Porter in this image, wearing a classic rebel-tee and sporting the short Porter crop. The look on his face, however, is definitely not Porter but Armitage: We are faced with a friendly lean-in and submissive head-tilt, not Porter’s assertive and provocative stare. In fact the facial expression is positively friendly: There are smiling eyes!!! The corners of the mouth curl up on both sides, characteristically slightly higher on his left with almost a dimple to cutify the cheek.

The image here has been shot with a small aperture which allows us to see all of RA in sharp focus. The lighting is harshly clear and undiffused as well, leaving hard shadows under the subject’s nose and chin, and resulting in a strong shadow on the background behind his left. This is a wonderful hi-res image of massive proportions. Click, girls, and you’ll be greeted with this:

Arrrrrgh. OMG!!!! Yes, that’s what happened to me when I unsuspectingly clicked to see the full size of the image. I was momentarily stunned. This *ooof* subsequently has taken me aaaaages to produce. But back ad rem, as tough as that may seem. *oooooooooooooooooooooooof* The chest hair is another Porter-residue, I presume, judging from the scene of Porter spread-eagled on the cross in SB 1×6. (Go on, check if I am right. You know you want to.)

Now that we’re so close, we might as well delve in deeper. Let’s part unwillingly from those chest hairs especially the three stray ones right at the lower edge of RA’s beard that he missed when he shaved that morning and have a look in at his eyes. We can see in them the reflection of the flash as tiny white specks, telling me that these were not softboxes, but simply the flash with shade, making the light as harsh as it is and bringing every little chest-hair detail of the subject to the fore. Thank you, Perou, thank you!

Let’s stay with the eyes for a moment, however, and reflect on a different issue – and the real reason why I have chosen to analyse this image today. New RA blogger Perry from Armitage Agonistes gave me the impetus to discuss this issue when she asked me at the weekend about the representation of colour in photography – specifically eye colour. What, she asked, *is* Armitage’s eye colour? His eye colour is described in various degrees of fan obsession as blue, light blue, deep blue, ocean blue, bright blue, azure blue, but also grey and green. Could it possibly be photoshopped *oh blasphemy*???

The colour question is a hard one. I personally think his eyes are lightish blue, and I base my opinion on his official actor’s head shot. (For a pre-me+richard *ooof* of that particular image click here.) But I have noticed his eyes changing colour, too. They often appear grey and in Strike Back I have found them to look green. There are a couple of possible explanations for the inconsistent eye colour. Let’s assume that Armitage does not wear colour-enhanced contact lenses. The colour of the eyes is actually determined by the part of the iris called stroma. This is the upper layer of the iris, and is of a rugged, irregular structure which seems to consist of individual, inter-connected fibres which control the diameter of the pupil. It is pigmented tissue. Due to the rugged structure of the iris, the perception of the eye colour can depend on both the angle of looking at the iris as well as the angle of the light that is catching the rugged structure of the stroma. Thus, the iris may get enhanced by the colour of the environment. Essentially, I think the predominant colours of the environment get reflected in the eyes. Or the relative brightness/darkness of the environment will make the eye colour look brighter or darker. Thus, we have Armitage’s blue peeps really popping in this shot – harshly lit, white background, light from front above catching the iris full-on. His eye colour is not dark blue, but not light-light blue, either.

It is quite possible that colours are not represented correctly in photography, however. For instance, if a yellow or red filter was put on the lens, it would actually affect the blue tones in the image and neutralise them into grey. Mind you, they are usually used to create b/w photography, so they wouldn’t really be used in the context we are discussing here – unless the photographer had fucked up with his lighting and needed to neutralise an unnatural hue by putting the image through some post-production filter. Unlikely.

For what it’s worth, the pictures that show his eyes as really, distinctly rich blue are definitely touched up. Unfortunately I haven’t looked deeply into his eyes in RL to corroborate this, but I just don’t think his eyes are deeply, distinctly blue. They adapt too easily to the surrounding colours and must be contain enough lighter fibres in order to do so. As a caveat let me hasten to add that colour perception in general is highly individual. The intensity of colour we perceive varies from person to person. What I consider a bright blue might appear watery to you, or vice versa.

There is of course that whole cultural thing about blue eyes. Blue eyes are deemed particularly attractive – blue is a calming colour, 70 percent of our planet (and our bodies) consist of water, the colour of which is perceived as blue. Do we like to be reminded of that by a look in RA’s eyes? Blue has religious overtones in many cultures (see the blue associated with the Virgin Mary). Blue eyes make their owners appear open, like a clear window you can look into the soul through. It is the colour of the sky above and reminds of heaven. And blue is associated with peace, hence the blue berets of the international NATO peace-keeping troops.

Does it really matter? Of course not. There’s more to Armitage than some pigmented tissue we are talking about here. However, in the pursuit of truth I am willing to research this in-depth. If you could all scrape a little petition together, I am your woman for some photographic exploration of “The Armitagean Iris Under Varying Lighting Conditions”. Could take a day or two – indoor, outdoor differences of light, artifical lighting vs. natural light, sunlight, cloudy, dusk and dawn. Filters (red, blue, yellow). Sidelight, straight-on, three-quarters left right and centre, up and down. Phew, might take a while. I can free up my schedule, I am pretty flexible. And ready to delve in deep. For a look in your eyes, Armitage! Let’s put this to bed.

All text © Guylty at me + richard armitage, 2013. Please credit when using excerpts and links. Images and video copyrights accrue to their owners.

~ by Guylty on July 16, 2013.