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Innocence

Vanessa Birstow took this photo of a child in Zimbabwe. She called it "The Boy With the Sapphire Eyes."

[scotttie]

WOW!!! What an amazing looking child!!!!! Is that really the color of his eyes. ?

[Lila Belle]

Mesmerizing !

I've always loved this photo of Sharbat Gulafrom NatGeo.

[gazelle77]

I am sure they have been enhanced to make them more blue and shocking....still they are beautiful.

[Lila Belle]

The above image was recently entered into our Safari Readers’ Gallery. The photographer, Vanessa Bristow, called it The Boy with the Sapphire Eyes.

Within minutes of posting this magical picture, there was an enormous flood of comment and feedback. Amongst much of the rumpus was a fair degree of suspicion, doubting and downright slander about the picture’s authenticity. Swoops of ‘blatant photoshopping’ were amongst the commotion. The majority of people drew their immediate conclusion – this photo was a fake!

It always amazes me how some people’s very first reaction to a photo on the internet is a negative one. I’m not sure what qualifies a ‘real’ or ‘doctored’ image, but many of the comments assured that this pic had all the tell-tale signs of photoshopping.

Let us set the record straight. The photo is not altered at all. Here is a comment from the photographer herself:

To all of you DOUBTING THOMAS’S out there who distrust the originality of this photograph: It is NOT Photoshopped. I was in the local communal lands looking for my lost Dalmatian dog, and I stopped to ask his mother if she had seen it. While I was talking to her, her son, who was playing with his siblings and friends nearby, caught my eye. I asked her if I could photograph him, and this is the first picture that I took of him – it was possibly his first interaction up close with a white person, and his fascination in me, or in the camera, is plainly evident. I took a few photos of him at the time, and a few more later on a follow-up. An ophthalmologist friend had this to say about his unusual eyes:

“The picture of the little boy with the blue eyes and dark skin probably represents Ocular Albinism or Nettleship-Falls albinism, or Juvenile uveitis. Both conditions cause the pigment of the iris to be less dense.”

- See more at: http://africageographic.com/blog/the-boy-with-the-sapphire-eyes/#sthash.NjKQdojz.dpuf

[sidsmom]

.....or you can just download one of a million free filter apps to enhance the photo. Not photoshop, but just a filter.

[biancardi]

at any rate, that is a striking photo and the little boy's eyes are certainly telling a story here.

[NoelSeven]

On 7/24/2014 sidsmom said:

.....or you can just download one of a million free filter apps to enhance the photo. Not photoshop, but just a filter.

You also thought the photobomb pic of Queen Elizabeth was photoshopped.

[Lila Belle]

Black and brown people can be born with blue and green eyes.

smh