Vision is what I think has inspired my images. Seeing is the essential physical function that facilitates vision. My seeing is about to change. Will my vision?
April 2008 Is
vision or seeing more important? Until recently, I would have said
vision. This is a talent whereas seeing is within the capabilities of
all photographers.
In the words of Henri Cartier-Bresson, a truly great image is created when a photographer captures the decisive moment. Cartier-Bresson's decisive moment requires vision. This is more than just seeing. It includes knowledge and sympathetic understanding of the subject, using that knowledge to anticipate lighting and changes in composition or content that are about to occur and anticipating how the final print will look, thus putting oneself in a position where one can take advantage of all these factors.
Compared to vision, seeing is more basic and involves simple camera and printing techniques. It includes making sure that key elements of a photograph are in focus or alternatively deciding that differential focus is desirable and ensuring that the main subject is at the point of focus. It may include assessing the colour palette of an image and planning to manipulate it in Photoshop or a similar programme. The output, either a darkroom photographic print or a digital image produced on a printer, must be free from colour casts. Furthermore, any computer manipulations must be subtle and must not not create artefacts such as pixellation or fringing due to oversharpening. Digital printing artefacts such as banding caused by blocked printer heads must also be avoided.
Seeing creates a competent image, vision inspires a great one!
Why have I written this? I am about to have bilateral cataract operations. Afterwards my seeing will undoubtedly improve. But I am wondering how better seeing will affect my vision. All the creativity (manipulation of colour saturation, choice of colour, use of blur, reduced contrast and grain) I have put into my pictures so far may turn out to be an illusion. How will my images look and will I like them? Will my style still be there?
The impact of these concerns has been the creation of this website to record and disseminate those images that, until now, I have created and others have liked.
What will happen when my cataracts are removed? Watch this space ....................
June 2008 My cataract operations have been completed and I am delighted with the results! As well as losing the catarcts, I have had lenses implanted to correct both short and long sightedness. I am spectacle free. My long distance seeing is perfect. Colours are unchanged in hue and saturation but much brighter. Reading is less easy at present. I can see to read but not unless I concentrate very hard. Due to the complexity of the lenses, I have a choice about where to focus. I have to train my brain to automatically make me focus at the correct distance.
I shall be eternally grateful to Mr Mark Benson, Dr John Bleasdale and all the staff at the Midland Eye Institute in Solihull for their skill and kindness. Their gift of restoring my sight is truly miraculous.
Each eye was operated on seperately with a month in between. For those of you about to embark on similar surgery the changes in my seeing, from the start of the first operation to the present when it is nine days after my second operation, are 'interesting'. Out of consideration for the sqeamish, I will gloss over most of the details of the surgery. One of my greatest fears had been of needles being placed around my eye to inject local anaesthetic. It turned out that all the local anaesthetic was administered as drops by Dr Bleasdale. As you can imagine this was painless and a huge relief to me. Only when I presented myself for my second operation did I discover that despite the absence of needles, my anxiety before the first operation was patently obvious to everyone except me because I was shaking like a leaf. No wonder Dr Bleasdale offered me sedation which I refused and a kind nurse offered to hold my hand! The local anaesthetic meant the that the surgery was completely painless. That said, until I got used to it the bright light of the microscope was 'painfully' bright for a few seconds and as the lens was implanted I did feel intense pressure for a few seconds. Both these episodes were so brief that they were over before I could begin to worry about them.
As a doctor, albeit one who knows virtually nothing about eye surgery, I knew enough to worry about what might go wrong - a few fears were real but most were the products of an overactive imagination. As I lay on the operating table and the first operation progressed I realised that if I did not make myself concentrate on something other than all the complications I was certain I would suffer, I might go mad. So, I decided to try and remember the things I saw in the hope that I might convert them into a medal winning image. Contrary to what one might expect, I did not see any of the instruments and could not 'watch' the operation. Instead I saw beautiful patterns of colours. The patterns were constantly shifting but the colours were constant - delicate pinks, blues and greens. At one point they turned into amazing swirls. During the second operation, I also had a brief period when I might have been looking down from space onto a vast polar landscape. Sadly, I have not been able to recreate the images easily although I still intend to try!
I wore a pad for 24 hours after each operation and then my new seeing was revealed. My photographs looked unchanged and definately did not have a colour cast but on the second day I was conscious that sometimes objects such as paper that I knew should be white were yellow. I had expected that the cataracts might have made me see things more yellow than they really are, but I did not expect this to happen after they were removed. On reflection, I suspect that either the surface of my eye or my tears were temporarily stained with the iodine that was used as a sterilising solution.
After the first operation designed to correct my short-sightedness, I had a perfect left eye that did not need spectacles and a right eye that was as bad as ever. At this point, my reading was OK but I had great difficulty judging distances and my long distance vision was slightly blurred due to the influence of the uncorrected eye. In my ignorance, I had thought that I could correct this if I used my spectacles minus the lens for the left eye. Despite the fact that Mr Benson told me it would not work, I could not resist experimenting! Distant objects instantly changed from appearing slightly further away than I thought they should to appearing huge. The effect was so dramatic that I actually ducked to avoid our oak tree which seemed to leap out of the garden and into the kitchen!
Over the four weeks between the two operations, I became accustomed to seeing without my glasses. Even at that time, I was aware that I could see some things more clearly than I had been able to in the past. Although the technology that allows this type of surgery is fantastic, patients cannot be guaranteed perfect vision even after the second operation. Given that I already knew how well the first operation had gone, my expectations of the second operation oscillated between hoping for 'normal' vision and preparing myself for the unexpected.
As it turned out, the second operation did cause unexpected consequences. They all occurred because I have only just appreciated that, having worn spectacles since I was eight years old, I have no idea what 'normal' is! My long distance vision is stunningly good. I will never forget the green woodpecker that visited our garden three days after my second operation. I have 'seen' green woodpeckers before, or thought I had. But this time was different. It was quite magical to see for the very first time the bird's feathers in detail and to observe subtle colour differences and the gorgeous sheen. I also discovered that apart from the need to teach my brain to focus my eyes properly when I read or do close work, I am hampered by coping habits developed over eons that are hard to shake off! Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I still do is reach for my spectacles and panic because they are not there! I also have a bad habit of hunching over books to make the text larger. Currently, all this does is to make it even more difficult to focus. Finally, when I want to thread a needle or read extremely small writing, I find myself looking over my non-existant spectacles at a blurry object held two inches in front of my eyes. Given that these bad habits have been ingrained for fifty years, I suspect it may take several more months before I really appreciate just how good my sight is and begin to see like normal people.