Taurus! Taurus!

Both my husband and I are Tauruses. Then we have two friends who are also Tauruses. So we tend to plan a party somewhere in the middle of all those April & May birthdays. That’s usually around the time for my birthday. This year we all had lunch at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants.

The birthday couple

There are two Tauruses in this photo

The rest of our guests

Two more Tauruses and birthday cake.

Thoughts on Day 126

Some thoughts from my niece Sarah from yesterday, Saturday May 6th, also known as day 126.

I’ve know we have been away for awhile, dealing with health challenges, but with the rebirth of spring we seem to be on the mend. So we intend to re-restart this blog again this week.

LVP: Photoshop Frustration?

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

I’ll try again and get back to you.

2022 Wrap ups: The ups and downs

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.

Tweeting No More

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.

Low Vision Photography (LVP)

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. 

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.

Which one do you prefer? And why?

A Blog About Film and Film Cameras. Exploring My Personal Vision through the Intersection of Life & Art.