Nick birchak's photostream

My name is Nicholas John Birchak I am 25 years old and was born legally blind. Beyond 12 inches everything and everyone gets blurry to me. Also, when I was seven years old I developed Epilepsy. I have tried every conceivable medication for Epilepsy and am currently in slated for brain surgery later this summer. Dealing with all of this has been challenging at times but I have found photography as a way to get away from my world and focus on the world around me.
It wasn't until my last semester in my undergraduate at the College of Saint Rose that I found photography. It was purely by curiosity and willingness to try to do something others might think I “shouldn’t be able to do” that I fell in love with photography. In the fall semester of 2006, the last semester of my undergraduate, I enrolled in a Black and White Photography course. Something about it intrigued me enough to try it despite my vision.

As the semester progressed, I learned to develop film, print paper, and frame photographs in the dark room. My professor was impressed at my unique “perspective” one that I attribute to my vision (or lack thereof). After taking the course my fasination of photography only grew. I believe, in a world of deadlines and urgency, it is easy to overlook beautiful and quite simplistic things in life such as a sunrise, or a flower. That is why when I shoot, I try to show the sighted world "A Blind Perspective"....... my perspective."