I spent the last two weeks thinking, planning and trying to create a post about what I can see vs. what the rest of you can see of my images. We spent a couple of hours trying photoshop an image to represent what I see. Well, nothing we tried was able to capture what I see. So we are putting this on hold until we can find another way to make the image I’m looking for.
But I wanted to post something, so here it is. A meme we found from a few months ago that never got posted. It still has some relevance, but nothing to do with my original blog intent. Enjoy
As a year, 2022 seems to have had a lot of ups and downs for our family and friends. So let’s start with with ups.
Early in 2022 my Mother celebrated her 98th birthday. Overall she is still going strong and we’ve started thinking about doing something special for number 100! For her 90th birthday we had a big family gathering in Florida, and unless we think of something else, we plan to do that again.
2022 was also the year of our Johnson family reunion. It was hosted by my cousin Dwight and held at a wonderful county park near Cincinnati called Winton Woods. Family came from as far as Colorado, Florida, New York, South Carolina and the state of Washington, as well as the greater Cincinnati area.
In 2022 Donald & I celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary. It doesn’t feel like it has been that long.
For our anniversary we hosted a party at our favorite Italian restaurant called Parma. We invited all of our local friends.
2022 has also brought some triumphs for my health. My full knee replacement has completely healed and I barely have a scar. Some pituitary issues have been resolved and are now under control. And my back treatments have stabilized my lower back issues until I’m well enough to have surgery for the issue. My balance has improved enough that I no longer need the walker. This has allowed me to start working on my blind cane training, which is coming along well.
Now for the downs, which have exclusively been health related. The first is my Mother in law, who shattered her femur. She also took a face plant into the door on the way down and looks like she’s been in a fist fight.
She spent four months in a rehab hospital and is still struggling to transition from the wheelchair back to a walker.
Just after my my mother in law fell, husband fell and tore his quad. After 5 months it didn’t heal, so he will be having surgery soon to repair it.
And the big down for the year is my vision loss. It continues to slowly degrade. I’m facing complete vision loss in the next few years so I’ve started to learn how to navigate with a cane. Once I learn to use the cane I can apply to get a seeing eye dog. That is my eventual goal.
I would like to wish everyone best wishes for a Happy New Year. Despite my visual challenges I’m looking forward to getting out to explore new horizons in the coming year.
I’m writing this blog post for my Twitter followers. This, and my other blogs, were set up to automatically post on Twitter. However due to the actions of the new owner of Twitter, I will no longer be posting there. I hope to keep my Twitter followers as blog followers as I restart this blog after my long illness. I’m also considering alternatives to Twitter such as Instagram, but haven’t finalized that. I’ll make an announcement here when I’ve decided what I’m going to do.
Aha! You thought I was gone. But I’m back. Those of you who have followed my illness know where I’ve been. The rest of you can read about it here. For the last few months I’ve been thinking about what I want to do with my photography. A recent article by Chris Gampat about low vision photography (LVP) inspired me to give it a try.Â
People often wonder how one can do photography while blind. So first let’s define what what we mean by low vision photography. Low vision isn’t exactly blind. Many of us learned photography while we still had some vision. This is why the phrase low vision is more accurate than blind. Chris learned photography after he had lost much of his vision. I’ve only recently lost significant vision, but I’ve been doing photography all of my adult life.
To illustrate this, here are two images (one above & one below) of the same subjects and scene. The first one, the blurred one, is somehow more compelling than the second, which is technically more correct.
Here are two more images. They are abstract because of the lighting and the exposure. They both have some interesting elements in common, such as strong back lighting, and some that are not, such as motion blur.
This is not how I intended to restart my blog! However something important happened today. Queen Elizabeth II has died at the age of 96, after 70+ years of reign.
From Getty Images
As a final tribute, we sing:
God save our gracious Queen, Long live our noble Queen, God save the Queen! Send her victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us, God save the Queen!
 Near the Avery brewery in Boulder county is an open space named Twin Lakes. Along the eastern side of the one of the reservoirs is an old irrigation ditch. We thought the flowing water and the dense vegetation made for an interesting photograph.  This image was made sometime this last summer. We plan to head back and capture the same scene with snow and bare trees sometime this winter.
This image was made with a Mamiya 7 and Kodak Portra film.
2021 has been a challenging year. But we survived the Superior/Louisville fire here in Colorado. And my health is on the mend. So here is hoping that 2022 will be better than 2021.
This is my favorite song quote from the 1975 Diana Ross film Mahogany. It says a lot about my current situation.
As you can see I’m still using a walker. And as it turns out, I will soon be having surgery on my right knee; a total knee replacement. Hopefully my recent fall on my left knee will not require additional surgery.
Sorry that I missed my August posting, I’ve been very distracted due to my continuing health issues. I also have an update on my vision. I am now legally blind, but with my husband’s help I am able to continue to blog. The proton beam radiation treatment for my tumor has damaged my optic nerves, leaving partial degraded vision in the right side and no vision in the left. As you can guess, this has made photography challenging, but not impossible. I persevere! I have even heard of blind photographers. I will have to investigate their work.
Happy 4th of July everyone. I’m glad to still be with you. For my followers, due to my vision I will be limiting my posting here to about once a month. For more frequent posts visit me at Longs Peak Journal.
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