[nabs-l] Recording NABS meeting

[T. Joseph Carter]

Peter,

I've seen what passes for art produced by at least one totally blind 
photographer.  It was indistinguishable from the type of work of a 
couple of other art photographers whose work was offered as a 
comparison.  Not a one had anything in focus or well-framed.  I mean, 
I take far better pictures than that!  Of course, that's why I'm not 
considered an "artist", I guess.  *grin*

That said, I know a couple of other blind photographers whose work 
comes out pretty nicely, and I must use alternative techniques myself 
when doing anything with a camera outside on a sunny day since in 
that condition I literally have no vision either.  About 2/3 of my 
shots look something like I intended--though I sometimes need to 
tweak the color histogram to get the colors to look like they should 
since I have to depend on a lot of automatic settings.

Joseph


On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 12:38:06AM -0500, Peter Donahue wrote:
>Hello Christopher and listers,
>
>    On the surface this is true, but if you would but experament as we're 
>doing here you might be pleasantly surprised by how much digital photography 
>and video work we can do nonvisually as I'm now discovering. Several of the 
>sites I manage contain pictures taken by blind persons with little to no 
>vision. They found alternative techniques to use for "Getting that perfect 
>shot" and preparing photos for a Web Site or other presentation. I 
>personally know some of them and talked withthemabout their techniques for 
>taking pictures.
>
> I have some vision, but more often than not I fall back onaa mnon-visual 
>method for doing tasks such as manipulating photos to prepare for the Web 
>and for other presentations. A knowledge of photographic techniques will 
>allow you to figure out how to do tasks such as resizing photos and pasting 
>them in to text documents such as those created with Microsoft Word and 
>Adobe Acrobat. There are some tasks that will require sighted assistance, 
>but again a thorough knowledge of photography could help you find 
>work-arounds for them. Want to avoid pixcelation in photos. Don't enlarge 
>them excessively. No vision required.
>
>    If we can find ways to take pictures and digitally process them for 
>display the next logical step would be davveling in to the World of digital 
>video. On the surface one is lead to think that there's no way for a blind 
>person to shoot video sequences. I think there's one Raymond Kurzweil whose 
>all ready working on that problem in relation to the Kurzweil NFB Reader. 
>Future versions of the reader will include object recognission and 
>eventually the ability to describe the location and movements of people and 
>objects in a particular location.  Perhaps this technology will eventually 
>find its way in to video cameras to assist sighted videographers as well as 
>aspiring blind ones.
>
>    If we would just think out of the box we might figure out ways blind 
>people can shoot video until this technology is perfected.
>
>    Just as with preparing still photos there are tasks that would be visual 
>in nature in the digital video World. One that comes to mind off-hand is 
>being able to sinc audio recordings with video sequences. For example if 
>you're filming a documentary that shows a whale breaching you need to be 
>sure the viewer hears the splash when the whale hits the water and sees it 
>visually. It would be rather amusing if The splash was heard when the whale 
>is still under water. But perhaps here too there may be a nonvisual 
>solution. Some of us are learning how to sinc text documents with audio when 
>creating digital talking books. This is done by placing markers in the audio 
>files that correspond with text files of the DAISY document. A similar 
>process is used to link audio and visual eents in a video. This now leaves 
>us with just the need to visually verrify that the sincing is correct, and 
>that the appearance of the video is of a high quality. There's always the 
>good old team approach to surmount this obstacle.
>
> The moral of the story is that if we imagine ways to do what we wish to do 
>in life there are ways for a blind person to achieve the seemingly 
>unachievable and do the seemingly undoable. Okay you aspiring vlind 
>videographers let's develop the techniques so we can show and tell them how 
>it's done!
>
>Peter Donahue