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[camwyn]

Chanter? Saw this article in Audubon, thought of you.

As a Blind Bird Photographer, Each Shot I Take Is a Revelation

"As far back as I can remember, I’ve been enthralled with animals. Wherever I went, it wouldn’t take long for me to orient to the nearest one. By age eight, I could identify upward of 100 dog breeds. Yet when it came to birds, my list wouldn’t have gone far beyond Northern Cardinals and Blue Jays. I often heard my grandfather warmly refer to “chickadees,” but this species only existed vaguely in my mind’s eye as a small, probably cute bird. Until recently, I never actually saw a Black-capped Chickadee in a way that I could appreciate. When my grandparents marveled over a bird at their feeder, I only experienced their joy vicariously.

"I was born with a congenital condition called Septo-Optic Dysplasia, and as a result, I’m almost totally blind in my left eye and legally blind in my right. Blindness is not a binary condition, but rather affects individuals across a broad spectrum. On one end is a total lack of light perception, while the other is where the criteria for legal blindness begins: 20/200 uncorrectable vision in the better eye or a severely restricted visual field. I’m among the majority of blind individuals who have some usable vision, and I happen to fall on the end of the spectrum with the greatest degree of functional eyesight..."

Comments

[chanter1944]

Thank you very much! I’ll read this when I am no longer poking at a phone screen.

[chanter1944]

Thank you! Will read when not on a phone. 🦉🦆🦅

[derien]

We met a guy at a party years ago who had a similar issue, and we happened to have a digital camera with a large view screen which you could tilt. He was so happy with being able to look down into that view screen, and see the faces of the people he was talking to, that I nearly wanted to just give him that camera. Only, it was pretty expensive for us and I had the feeling he probably had enough money he could get one for himself. (I had the impression that most of the people at that party came from an income bracket slightly above my previous experience.) And then like a year or two later a friend of Eor's borrowed that camera and broke it, and when we went to replace it we found that there were no more like it available. So I hope that guy did find one.