picked up a camera and saw's photostream  

legally blind since 1977
bought a Nikon D60 april 2009


I wrote the following letter to a friend describing my eyesight



my vision

I lost eyesight in my left eye in 1976, I was a tree trimmer at the time, we called ourselves tree surgeons for some reason, right around the same time garbage men started calling themselves sanitation workers. I believe the title ‘surgeon’ came with a raise in pay if I’m not mistaken. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me, but they had a medication for it nonetheless…We couldn’t do that to a tree, just guess at stuff I mean and throw chemicals at it willy-nilly, even though we were ‘surgeons’ there were very strict rules on how you treated a tree back then, it was the seventies don’t forget. I use to tell people I was blind in one eye, I knew nobody could tell, I could barely tell myself, I felt the need to say it anyway (now-a-days I rarely if ever tell anyone anything except for maybe ‘I don’t have my glasses can you help me’ with whatever it is, and I’d say it while I am wearing my glasses). I remember closing my right eye, my good eye, while looking out of my left eye and saying I’m screwed if that’s all the eyesight I had. I remember being in a tree, a taller tree than the surrounding trees, during a major ice storm (tree surgeons were always very busy during ice storms…just like real surgeons), it was only an hour or two since sunrise, and while looking out over all the other trees and the rest of the world covered in ice and the reflection of the sun on absolutely everything, the entire ice encrusted world looking like a gigantic treasure chest hanging on a string, me hanging in mid air, a rope connecting me to a higher limb, I said to myself I would never see anything more beautiful. And I never did. I lost the eyesight in my right eye shortly thereafter, almost a year to the day of losing the eyesight in my left eye.

Again the doctors didn’t know why, again they had a medication for it. The medication was working this time however, unlike the first time when it didn’t do anything except launch a 14 yearlong stomachache. I went from no light perception in my right eye (heretofore my good eye) to a great deal of light perception quite quickly, albeit never reaching the acuity of my bad eye, now my good eye my left eye.

How I lost my eyesight, or I should say the process of losing my eyesight is easy to relate, a description of how I see will be more difficult. It would be something like a person with 20/20 having a band of clear strapping tape wrapped around your head and covering your eyes (with the tape crinkled up in some areas). Me trying to read a street sign at a distance of three feet is about the same as you reading the same sign at a distance of about 100 feet (that only applies if you can’t read the street sign at 100 feet). I can see a squirrel run across the street at a distance of 15 feet or so, it’s important for me to recognize squirrels with Chuck and all. I see the squirrel as surly as you would see the squirrel but not the same as you do, I see it’s a squirrel because of the way it moves, you know how they jump nervously and always head towards the next nearest tree, well that tells me it is not a blowing piece of paper or a cat or a anything else. Throw in the body language of Chuck (Chuck is My dog) and I probably see the squirrel better than you would. But then again under the right conditions I’ve stepped in front of an oncoming car 10 feet in front of my face. I have a large central blind spot in both eyes that makes whatever I’m looking at invisible, things that cross my path of vision are more apparent than things coming straight at me. It’s hard to describe but the totally blind areas don’t stand out as specific areas to be cautious of. A blind spot sounds like a black area, and with some perhaps it is, but with me it’s not, it’s gray, a gray that merges seamlessly with it’s surroundings like an out of focus panoramic Kodak moment on a cloudy, foggy day and somewhere along the way the center of the lens picked up a drop of dew. So I move my eyes a lot. In terms of important things to be aware of (safety issue type stuff) my ears play a more important role than my eyes do.

Weather plays a big role; my best seeing days are overcast, no sun, no shadows, shadows can be anything, bright sunny days are confusing, however, I still prefer sunny days over cloudy; I guess at some level I like dealing with shadows. Rain adds the confusion of reflections, especially at night, and the sound of rain inhibits my hearing, but who doesn’t love a good rainy day now and then. Snow is very disorienting for a lot of reasons, more so on a bike. There is nothing good about snow except for how much fun it is. Distance is a big factor of course, up close I can actually see clearly enough to make eye contact with someone across a short distance if I move my eyes right. But it’s strange, something as important as eye contact seems uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and the timing is always off; eyes that move out of kilter can appear disconcerting for others. I can see a total distance of about 100 feet before the shadows begin to merge into a gray background. I can see lights much further of course. As my homeless friend Peter once said when I asked him about his eyesight, he said it was perfect ‘I can see all the way to the moon’ he said, as he pointed to the noon day sun.

My ability to ride a bike comes from familiarity with where I ride. The reason I can ride 25 mph with Chuck at my side is because I just rode the same path at 4 mph minutes before the run making sure there were no obstacles in the way (I only ride that fast on well protected paths with a near zero chance of mishaps). And generally I am able to trust that the streets here in beautiful downtown Myuville are always clean allowing me to ride with confidence even in unfamiliar territory. Trust is really the lynchpin to it all.

That’s about it in a nutshell.

I do run into a surprise now and then:

The roadblock that wasn’t there the day before.

The dead tinseled Christmas tree hiding in the shadows of the street just waiting for me to complete the scene.

The funny time when a ramp was left in the middle of a sidewalk on Mystreet, undoubtedly by skateboard kids, a big ramp way big enough to see in time, I had avoided much smaller objects countless times before, but by the time I asked myself what did I just hit I was airborne. I didn’t have time to flinch and made a perfect landing. I’m sure passersby thought I was just showing off.

Tthe not so funny time when I hit the post at the parrie path entrance meant to block cars from entering. I knew the post was there, I’d past similar posts at least a dozen times that day (I was riding a bike-a-thon for the blind), I knew it was there, I knew exactly where it was, and yet I hit it anyway. I went troubling over the bike like an acrobat who could fly through the air but didn’t have a clue on how to land. Miraculously I was okay, but the bike was totaled.

And then there was theThe surreal rear end collision. I was riding down a hill on a perfectly clear silent day, no question marks in my head. All signs said go as fast as you want. At the bottom of the hill I hit an invisible wall, at first lurching forward, and them bouncing back before hitting the ground. In front of my face a horizontal mushroom cloud exploding like a gigantic jellyfish attempting an escape… I had hit a very large lady in the butt wearing a huge gray overcoat that ballooned out in slow motion upon impact. I apologized profusely while walking with her to the bus stop, actually pleading with her to let me call for help (there was a pay phone right there). She insisted she was okay, even making light of the situation. She was either the best natured, most good-humored person I had ever met, or she was in a state of shock.

Postscript;: Sometimes I will be able to see a bug no bigger than dust fly across my vision....................

I can't use a LCD screen to frame pictures because my hands shake, although the view-finder on my Nikon D60 is pretty good I can barely see thru it, however, if I press the shutter enough times I can catch the focus point, and that helps a lot.