Images Without Sight: The Swainson's Thrush

Thursday, July 15, 2010

The Swainson's Thrush

Sidewalk with spiked wrought iron railing.

Me: Here are more of the photos from Florida and Louisana Susan shot on her trip there.

The film that was fogged by airport X-ray scanners.

Film I scanned instead of enlarging.

I'm choosing again to share the images as they appeared with the default scan settings; I find the rosy tone appealing and also very characteristic of Susan.

For some reason, when I saw these images I thought of the Swainson's Thrush. This is a bird I've never seen in person, although I hear it in the forest when I am hiking.

Inez in a double exposure in front of wrought iron railing.

Its song is my favorite, and to my ear it is different from any other bird I've heard.

It has the resonance and breathiness of a wooden flute, usually beginning mid-range with a single note held a few breaths, followed by some experimental trilling. Then the song takes off, trilling mordents on a rising scale finally reaching a few exhuberent finish notes, sometimes followed by a self-satisfied whirring.

This song always intrigues me with its hollow notes that have so much timber and airflow. I hear the notes just long enough to be intrigued by them, then I am taken away as the mordents float up and up into the trees.

You can hear a Swainson's Thrush here: at the MacCaulay Library of the Cornell Institute of Ornithology.

That's my metaphor for today's images. Beauty can be shared and experienced in many different ways. I don't have to see it to enjoy it, or I might even see something different than you do.

But we both share in the enjoyment.

Cheers! More photos to come soon.

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What Motivates a Photographer?

One might think only a sighted person would be interested in photography, because they could see the outcome of their efforts. However, when I (a sighted person) started shooting in the dark using a Holga, I quickly began to enjoy the process of shooting itself. I found it challenging to think of new situations to shoot and new photographic possibilities. It was a challenge, also, to stumble around in the dark -- setting up my subject and determining how far it was from the camera lens. The pictures were almost second to this experience.

And so Susan and I share a common interest, I think. Susan, whom I approached to do the photography for this project, was diagnosed as a child with retinitis pigmentosa. Effectively, she cannot see. If we are sitting by a window, Susan can tell there is light in that quadrant of her vision, but beyond that she cannot discriminate by sight. Over the years even this ability has dimmed.

Susan navigates the larger world with the help of her Seeing Eye Dog, Inez, who is a happy, comic and relaxed Golden Retriever. Nellie, Susan's retired Seeing Eye Dog, also lives at home with her. Both dogs figure prominently in Susan's life and their personalities come through in the photos on these pages.

When Susan describes how she sets up a shoot, I smile inwardly in quick recognition. She walks around the set and feels everything for its relationship to the other subjects she wishes to capture. She walks back and forth to determine the distance to the subject and her ideal focal setting, and then snaps the picture.

If she is with someone, she might ask them what they see and then shoot with that information in mind.

So, what is motivating Susan to participate in this project? What motivates her as a photographer? She describes herself as seeing in images -- even if she can't see images the way I see images. She loves color, texture, and dimension. And she loves solving problems. To her, setting up a shoot is a challenge that she wants to meet. She meets each challenge with enjoyment and verve. I get the sense that the process might even be more important than the outcome.

Bio: Susan Gjolmesli

Susan Gjolmesli is the photographer for this project. She was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at the age of ten and navigates her world with the aid of a Seeing Eye dog, Inez. She is an avid gardener and was formerly a floral designer! Put that in your kettle of "preconceived notions".

Susan is Director of the Disability Resource Center at Bellevue College in Bellevue, Washington where she was recently named by the college as a Living Treasure. Her office works with students so they have access to classrooms, libraries, media and resources. Not only does the office provide physical assistance for classroom participation, they offer technology to translate traditional academic materials into media which can be consumed by the student. Technologies include scanners, braille printers, screen readers, mobile pda/scanners, personal media devices, text enlargers, and screen magnifiers, among others. The office serves as an advocate for students and an educational resource for the campus.

Susan is often called upon to present at events both on and off campus; she is a spoken advocate for equal rights. It would be trite to say that she has long been an advocate of the disabled. More to the point, she has worked to educate us as to how narrow-minded our view of the world can be -- inasmuch as we view people who are blind or deaf or require the aid of assistive devices as being "disabled".

Susan would be the last person to describe herself as disabled. In fact, the ability that she cannot see has empowered her in so many other ways that we take for granted.

Susan is also a writer, and her opinions may make you think twice about your own. Read her article,"You Shouldn't Have Any Children and Other Forms of Blindness".

You can also explore the Disability Resource Center at Bellevue College to see what these folks do to enable students to succeed. Software, hardware, technology, advice, support, and advocacy are all available to help students interact with what the majority of us think of as a "traditional" classroom.

If you were walking down the street and wanted to check out headlines at a newspaper stand, all you need do is scan the headlines. For someone who cannot see, a few years ago it wasn't possible to "scan headlines". These days, it requires a fairly heavy PDA with OCR cabilities to capture an image of the newspaper and then read the headlines out loud. But such improvements take awareness and interest, which is what Susan promotes so tirelessly.

Bio: Tess McMillan

I am new to the mantle of "artist". I left Microsoft in Fall of 2006 when my division underwent a re-org. I decided to go back to school.

I obtained a certificate in Programming at Bellevue College and received the WAVE scholarship in 2008. Because I had an interest in design and interactivity, some of the faculty members suggested I take a foundation of art courses to give me a better design sensibility. So I spent two years in studio classes studying photography, sculpture, painting, ceramics, printmaking, and drawing, and taking courses in various Adobe software programs.

It was while working with the Holga that I discovered my own love of shooting in the dark, illuminating my subjects by painting them with various kinds of light. I found that -- contrary to a photographer capturing what exists at a given moment, I prefer to build my photographs using subjects that don't or can't exist together at any given moment. Here is a self-portrait .

It was a short jump from this work to working with Susan.

Images Without Sight