We were always taught that As human beings, we have five senses; touch, smell, hearing, taste, and sight. As a photographer, that last one is really important to me. My eyes have been trained from years of experience to see the world around me in still images so I know where to point my lens and when to shoot.

Today when I got home, I decided to try out my new running shoes that I bought over the weekend. After finishing the run (which was quite nice due to the shoes), I jumped into the shower. while rinsing my hair, some water got into both my eyes. Now for most people this isn’t a problem but for us contact wearers, this causes those little circles of plastic to stick to our eyes and sometimes fall out after blinking several times.

To avoid this, I shut both my eyes for the remainder of washing my hair so my eyes could rehydrate the contact lenses. For that one or two minutes while my eyes were shut I began thinking about how blind people must go through life-like this all the time. I started thinking about how different my life would be if I all of a sudden lost my vision and how it would affect my photography.

Before I knew it, I had moved on through the next stages of my shower ritual all with my eyes closed. Once realizing this, I starting wondering how long I could go with my eyes closed.

I managed to finish my shower, dry off, get dressed, make my way down the hall, down the stairs, find my shoes, and grab a light snack before having to use my vision to take the dog out. I think dressing was the hardest as I didn’t get the undershirt I wanted and it was a surprise to see what boxer briefs I was wearing once I did open my eyes.

It was a very interesting experience and I’d actually like to do it again sometime as it makes you rely on your other senses to compensate for your vision.

From a photography standpoint, the loss of vision isn’t a 100% career killer. There have been quite a few blind photographers that have made a name for themselves. Once such example is Peter Eckert. Click on the link to view a page with a short video documenting him and his work.

I also want to stress that although this was a fun little experiment, I do know and understand there are thousands of people out there that don’t have the choice to just “open their eyes” when they get tired of it. I have a newfound admiration for what they go through on a daily basis especially ones who haven’t let this disability get in their life’s way.

I’m now trying to come up with an idea for a photo shoot that could incorporate these newly experienced elements. Hopefully I can think of something and get it captured so I can show you guys here on this blog.