Teaching photography to blind learners
From RSCWMWiki
Contents |
Introduction
My name is Peter Bryenton. I teach visually impaired students to use Access Technology for effective study at New College Worcester, which is a national residential school and college for young people aged 11 to 19 who are blind or partially sighted. I have recently been encouraging and supporting some of them to express their creativity through photography and video.
Why?
Almost fifty years of professional and personal involvement with light and lenses has taught me that photography is less about seeing the world around us and more about experiencing it. Photography allows us to engage with our surroundings and to explore the interaction between our subjects and ourselves as image makers. Teaching photography to blind learners is challenging of course, but it is an extremely rewarding activity for both teacher and student. More importantly it is one which increases the learner's self-esteem.
How?
Modern digital cameras automatically take care of the technical side of picture making for us. They get critical details such as the focus, colour and exposure correct, leaving the photographer to choose the content. A fairly basic point-and-shoot camera with a large display screen enables even a totally blind user to frame an image with the support of a sighted assistant. It is always the photographer who makes the photograph, not the camera.
The move from the chemical processing of film and paper in a traditional “wet” darkroom to computerised digital imaging has significantly reduced many of the difficulties facing the teachers and learners of photography. It has never been simpler, quicker, more reliable or safer to get a good result.
Blindness
All students at New College Worcester are registered blind. Blindness as a disability encompasses a wide range of visual impairment. Degrees of sight range from absolutely nothing at all to some limited but useful vision. A child may have been born blind, or developed blindness later in life. Those with the most useful vision can view a display screen which has been magnified in some way. There are both software and optical magnifiers. If a combination of these is not helpful, those who can’t use them must run additional software which makes the display screen announce what’s on it. In other words they must use a talking computer. A person who cannot see a mouse pointer must instead use the keyboard to control a standard laptop or desktop PC. The graphical display can then be understood through the way it sounds. Such systems are not to everyone's taste, so there is also a range of Braille note takers available which work differently but every bit as well.
Sight
The information our eyes give us is basically in the form of some pretty raw data. For a start the eye’s lens turns everything upside-down. Each eye gives us a slightly different view (the very basis of depth perception). Then both these images are tinted red by the blood supply to the retinas. Our brains have to work very hard at processing this information in order to make sense of it. We must identify tone, shape, texture, colour, movement and more -- all in real time.
Blind people “see” the world too, but not through their eyes. Exactly the same visual parts of their brains interpret their world, even though much of the data might come through their ears and other senses (touch, smell & taste). Many blind people can echo-locate their position accurately in three dimensions, in ways similar to the sonar systems which exist in animals such as bats and dolphins. All human beings build up an internal model of their external world. They do this in order to make sense of their surroundings. So everyone, blind or not, actually "sees" in what we may call their mind's eye. Scientists can show this objectively by examining the visual areas of our brains using MRI scanning techniques. There's no difference between how blind and sighted people process internal "vision" information. There's only a subjective difference in experience and interpretation.
Perspective and viewpoint
Teaching an entirely visual subject like photography made me think long and hard about what parallels and analogies I might employ. My experiences in the classroom with blind children had shown me how very important sound is to them. Sound is one of the main sources of colour in a blind person's world. My students can hear my precise mood in the tone of my voice even before I know it.
Photography, like most specialisms, is full of jargon. There are wide shots, long shots, motion-blurred shots and so on. Zooming is a function on most cameras. But how to show that to a blind photographer? Zooming makes a noise, from either a motor or a moving lens. That was a clue: the germ of an idea grew.
I thought that the idea behind zooming in and out with a camera lens could be explored using what audio engineers might call "sound perspective". I stood with a learner in a large, modern chapel. It had hard, smooth floors and walls which made sounds echo. I stood at the far end of that large, reverberant space, then asked a listening student to focus on my voice while he was standing still at the opposite end. The mixture of direct and reflected sound gave him audio clues about the size and character of the room. I likened that to a wide angle view given by a camera fully zoomed out. Next I walked slowly towards the listener until I was right next to him, talking all the while. This I equated to zooming in. The acoustic quality of direct sound when very close up is similar to the fine detail in a picture when a lens is fully zoomed in. It's also like positioning a camera for a close-up shot. Whispering intimately into a listener’s ear is a bit like taking a macro shot.
Finding ways to explain photography to a blind person takes the sighted teacher on a fascinating journey. It can easily become one which ultimately increases and enriches skills, knowledge and understanding for both partners.
Making pictures
The rest was easy. It was simply about getting on, getting around and getting some pictures. A blind photographer needs to borrow a pair of eyes, so either the teacher describes what they have captured, or another learner in the group who has some useful sight can talk about the pictures. With the right kind of descriptive feedback, it doesn't take long to start seeing results.
Results
The descriptions of each of the photographs in the section below called "Using a Camera" were written by Lee James, who was a sixth-form student when he made them. His colour prints were exhibited on a school notice board in a communal area next to other artwork. The photographer’s written work was displayed in both large print and Braille formats so that everyone could access it.
The most fascinating part for me was to see the look of sheer joy on Lee's face when other people told him what their favourite picture was -- and why. That kind of direct communication, using a medium he could not see with his eyes -- but the power of which he completely understood -- was worth every last bit of the investment he and I made in our time and effort when we worked together. Since then many other students at my school have discovered how to express their ideas by making still and moving images.
Using a Camera (by Lee James)
Written at New College Worcester, April 2010, for Art Enhancement.
"I used a camera to create a range of different pictures. I was able to focus differently on each picture by moving the lens out to bring the picture more into focus. You could also bring the camera closer to the subject to make the picture more clear."
Picture A:
A large expanse of grass with a tiny cross of boiled sweets in the middle. Green and gold.
Picture B:
A zoomed in picture with half the cross of sweets and half grass.
Picture C:
Different area of the cross in the left-hand side of the picture.
Picture D:
A vertical pattern of sweets taken from slightly further back.
Picture E:
Zoomed in on picture D with enough detail to see the fruit on the sweet wrappers.
Picture F:
Zoomed in as far as possible giving maximum detail of the sweets taking up most of the picture.
Picture G:
Portrait (vertical format) picture taken indoors of fourteen sweets.
Picture H:
Very detailed picture of the gold wrappers with two yellow sweets in the top right-hand corner.
Picture I:
Orange star of sweets with a bit of gold at the top. Shadows made by light from the window.
Conclusion
There's really only one, folks: get out there and try this for yourself. It's really good fun.
Further Research
Book: “Seeing Beyond Sight” by Tony Deifell & others. Amazon UK
Seeing Beyond Sight organisation's website
IT4VI blog about sharing good practice for teachers of VI learners.
