DAMAGED RETINAS Katherine Maguire LRPS

from RPS Benelux Chapter eJounal Volume 19 Summer 2020

by Royal Photographic Society

BIEKE DEPOORTER AN EXTRAORDINARY PHOTOGRAPHER Armando Jongejan FRPS

The RPS Benelux-Chapter

MEMBER Katherine

Maguire

I suffer from a rare eye condition called Presumed Ocular Histoplasmosis Syndrome

My whole vision becomes blurred

Katherine was the winner of the February 2020 BI monthly competition, with her photo(s) ’damaged retinas’, organised by the RPS Documentary Group. It is a great result for her and her body of work.

“This image is part of my work towards a ARPS panel. I suffer from a disease that can cause blood vessels to form on my retinas, which in turn cause damage and leave behind scars. The scarred areas of the retinas are no longer able to process light correctly. The scars have developed on the edge of the macular of each eye. This has resulted in my central vision being blurred, as the brain uses this vision to focus the light that falls on the rest of the retina, my whole vision becomes blurred.

By combining two images taken at the same time, I am attempting to illustrate what it is like to live with damaged retinas. Using a 50 focal length lens, an aperture of f2.2 at a focus distance 5m on half of the image is produced to represent how I see the world, with only within 10 metres being in focus. The second half is then taken by changing the focus distance to infinity and changing the aperture to f11 and then combined to create one image.”

Facebook page of the RPS Documentary Group

working towards my A panel

I am currently working towards my A-panel which is all about my sight with damaged retinas and these images were taken for that panel.

This condition cannot be corrected by eye glasses.

I suffer from a rare eye condition called Presumed Ocular Histoplasmosis Syndrome that was first diagnosed in 2013. The condition causes small white spots to form on the retinas, which by themselves do not cause any loss of vision. However they can cause abnormal blood vessels to develop and when they heal they leave behind scars on retinas. If the cells responsible for central vision (the macular) are damaged then your brain has difficultly focusing. I now have scars located on the edge of the macular and other parts of the retina. So my distance vision is now always blurred and I have lost some of my peripheral vision on my left hand side. This condition cannot be corrected by eye glasses.

With my panel I am trying to show what it is like to view the world with damaged retinas. I have split the view with what I see and what everyone else sees. The image is in fact two images that have been combined using photoshop, my way of working is to first take the blurry image, setting the lens to 5m and the aperture to f2.2, I will then use the autofocus of the lens to refocus the lens, selecting which focus point that should be used. This normally results in the lens being focused at infinity, then reseting the aperture to f11 and then capture the second image.

My old photoshop work flow

In photoshop I remove the left half of the in focus image, and then copy the left half of the out of focus image and paste that into the in focus image. I will take one half and move it until both images are aligned. I will then crop the image to remove any extra white space. Then I will calculated the white space needed so that the divider is always constant size on the printed image and increase the canvas by this amount. Finally I will move one half so that the divider is now in the middle of the combined image.

New photoshop work flow

Since creating this image I have now changed my workflow, I have decided that both images should be out of alignment, and in the out of alignment being emphasised. Instead of increasing the canvas size, I add the divider as extra layer with a white filled rectangle on top of the cropped combined image, thus keeping the original ratio of the image.

We wish Katherine a lot of success to succeed in her ARPS.