Recently, I ran into a problem of shooting a person with a Lazy Eye or you can say Amblyopia. I worked on a few tips and it worked. So, I decided to make a new post about how to prevent lazy eye or cross-eye in photos and share those quicks tips with you too.
Table of Contents
How to Prevent Lazy Eye in Photos
In order to prevent lazy eye or amblyopia in pictures, you can change the focus of the subject, change your shooting angle, or adjust the head or body position of your subject. If the subject is a baby or infant, you can use a toy to catch their attention.
What is a Lazy Eye?
Now, if you don’t know what a wandering eye or a lazy eye is, let me explain simply. If someone is looking straight to you and all of a sudden, their eyeball tends to just drift away, this is called lazy eye or Amblyopia.
This is generally genetic and something the person cannot help, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t take photos of them, that’s actually absurd. It’s pretty simple to do so. It’s all about forcing the eye and looking a certain way that gives the eye kind of dramatic movement.
Keep in mind! The word lazy eye doesn’t actually mean that the eye is lazy. Actually, the eye is completely or partially blind which is why it’s not used by the person and hence their eyeball tends to drift away. It’s horrible but not incurable though. We have mentioned below some ways of treating the lazy eye.
How to Prevent Lazy Eye in Photos – Amblyopia Photography
If the subject is having either a lazy eye, a cross-eye, or a floating eye, it’s very difficult to take their perfect photos. You have to be prepared about it as those people are really self-conscious about it and they don’t say the first. So, when you take photos, you might notice it.
Posing Correction / Changing Body Position
The easiest thing you can do is to ask about pose changing. You can them if they mind about posing on your directions. If they don’t, emphasize a strong point and pose them a certain way. Tilt their head a certain way or their body.
You can ask the subject to tilt their body or their head, so it will look like the person is really looking that way. It’s the easiest and most natural fix for lazy eye photography. You can ask them to bring one of the sides of their head or shoulder a little forward. So, it would look natural.
So, what you need to ask the subject is to tilt a little, lean a bit and all of a sudden look up and you’re going to shoot right on the spot. It works.
Changing Focus of the Subject
There are multiple ways to manipulate the focus. You can ask the person to focus on a specific position and then just before taking the shot, ask the subject to look at the camera and take the shot.
Another way you can ask them is to look down and then all of a sudden lookup. It takes a little while for the eyeball to drift away, so you got a moment to click the photo. This one works more fine.
It means to manipulate the focus of the person you are taking photos of. It can lower the effect of lazy eye, but it mostly depends on whether the eye is more drifted inwards or outwards.
Inwards Floating Eye
If their eyeball drifts inwardly, then you should direct their focus away from the center of the lens.
Outwards Floating Eye
If the subject’s eyeball drifts outwardly, then you should direct his/her focus to the canter of the lens.
The looking down method works very well.
Change Your Shooting Angle
Another easy way to prevent a lazy eye in photos is to change your shooting angle. You can take a picture from a side or from a position higher which would prevent the lazy eye and make it feel natural.
What this would do is that it would force the eyes to focus on the camera and that’s both eyes will be in the same position. For example, you are taking the photo from the left side and ask the subject to look towards you. While looking at you the other eyeball will technically drift to the left side too and it won’t appear like a floating eye.
Taking Photos of Children with Lazy Eye
Lazy Eye or Amblyopia can occur in children more commonly. Children are o two types. In the first category, there are those who can be trained to pose in a specific manner, and in the second category are those who cannot understand or learn, which means they are infants or babies.
Those who understand and are learning how to pose correctly to prevent lazy eyes can eventually learn to pose or you can change your angle or apply some of your techniques to make a perfect-looking shot. Yeah! It’s not an easy job, but you’ve got to do it. But what about babies?
Taking Photos of Infants
The most challenging part comes when you have to take shots of a baby and you can’t get their eye to focus on the camera. It’s a very difficult job but not impossible. Babies can’t comprehensively understand your words or actions, so everything is on you.
There is a quite easy trick to make the baby focus. You need a toy or any bright object and bring it near the baby. It must catch the baby’s attention and you can straight capture to remove the lazy eye. To do this you might need an assistant that can hold the object for you to manipulate the baby’s focus.
Removal of Lazy Eye by Eye Cloning
There is also another way to hide the lazy eye and it’s called eye cloning. First of all, this method is not recommended because it’s not natural but is easier and you could use it if you got no other option.
So, what is eye cloning? Okay! First of all, you need to find a perfect-looking eye similar to the subject’s eye. Then you need to crop the second eye and adjust it over the lazy eye and boom! You’re done. This method requires photoshop skills, so you got to learn some skills, or you can even hire an editor if you need.
For More Answers, Visit Quora.com
Is Lazy Eye or Amblyopia Common?
It is common for kids to have a lazy eye at an early age. In the United States, 2 out of 100 kids are facing lazy eyes every year. It is common, though not uncurable. There are many treatments that can cure a lazy eye.
How to Fix a Lazy Eye
Now we are going to discuss, how to fix a lazy eye. There are different strategies used to improve vision loss from amblyopia. Let’s take a look.
When someone is diagnosed with lazy eye or the medical term for the lazy eye which is amblyopia, they are often questioning. Okay well, now how we treat the eye so, to see better. Fortunately, there are several strategies that we can use to help the eye see better after that diagnosis.
As mentioned previously, these treatments typically do work better in young children particularly when they are under the age of 8 or 9 years. However, there are cases, and many studies show that older children and even some adults will have improved visual outcomes utilizing these treatment strategies.
No, before we dive right into it, I do want to give you this word of warning. Do not attempt to diagnose or treat lazy eye or amblyopia without proper guidance from an eye care professional because the lazy eye is largely a neurological condition and therefore there is a chance to overtreat it and can therefore cause more damage.
Optical Glasses
There are special contact lenses for amblyopia patients that work very well than most other treatments. You just need to wear those lenses according to the prescription given by the doctor and the eye will come to its position eventually.
Vision Therapy
There are many therapies to treat a lazy eye before the age of 8 or 9. It is a program for the treatment of amblyopia including focusing, saccades, fixation, spatial skills, and eye-tracking exercises and treatments. Vision therapy can reduce lazy eyes and increase coordination of both eyes along with better sight.
Eye Drops
There are eye drops available in the medial stores which can fix the lazy eye issue according to the prescription of a doctor. It’s a must, to visit an Eye Specialist because you don’t want to hurt your eyes more without a proper doctor’s prescription.
Final Verdict
Now we are going to wrap up our post by saying that you can prevent the lazy eye in pictures by changing your angle, position, and speed. So, now you know what the lazy eye is and what causes this disease, and how to cure it. If you have any further queries, feel free to ask us in the comments.
