Vision
(vĭzh’ən), n. | the faculty of sight; eyesight
Welcome to my new website!
Throughout my life experience, my desire to become a professional photographer has never wavered. From my first photography course in college and in owning a Nikon F4 and an Olympus OM-1 camera many years ago, my love of photography has been greatly renewed with the brilliance of precise HD (High Definition) photography.
Through tremendous technological advancements, we are blessed today with incredibly sharp lenses (Nikon) and the back-room enhancement abilities of Photoshop and Adobe Bridge C56.
I feel blessed to own so many precision lenses … with what I feel to be the best SLR camera equipment in the world today with Nikon!
Again, thank you for visiting my website and in sharing with you my HD photography and my life experience!
A brief description of my life story — on how this photography website became a reality!
When I was 12 years old, I was told that I would someday become legally blind. At age 35, that prognosis eventually became true.
Slowly, over the next 18 years, my vision became more and more blurry, my eyes became greatly more painful, and my life became incomprehensibly harder.
In 1973, I was diagnosed with a rare and (at that time) misunderstood disease called Keratoconus. The diagnosis was bleak and I was facing an unknown and uncertain future. I lived for years in a constant state of denial – even as my sight steadily diminished. Although improvements in medical technology during my teens gave me an escape from the disease in the form of contacts known as Piggyback (Saturn) lenses, my relief was short lived. Eventually, the tight-fitting lenses would break (lasting for only a month) and rubbed and scarred my corneas to a point where neither they nor glasses were able to correct my vision. My vision became so poor, that the best Opthalmology equipment could no longer even read the steep protrusion of my corneas – likened to high hills and the deepest of valleys. My corneas became as thin as cellophane tape and they could rupture at any time.
It’s no less a modern day medical miracle, that today, I have corrected “perfect” 20/20 vision.
At 30 years old, my blindness had progressed to the point where going to work and completing daily life tasks had become a tremendous struggle. My desire to become a successful and promising Architect was no longer possible. My fiancee left me. Most of my family had abandoned me. Most people could not possibly understand what my world now looked like through my scared, irregular shaped, bulging “painful” corneas.
For approximately 7 years, from age 29 to age 36, I lived with the worst part of the disease; likened to going into a war against it.
Through my Ophthalmologist, Dr. Rodney Hawk, in Colorado, I met with Dr. Alfred Roberts (a corneal surgeon) and I was finally placed on the donor list for my first corneal transplant surgery in July of 1996. My second successful eye surgery occurred three years later in September of 1999, through the Denver Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank. However, this entire process of getting my vision restored was nothing short of an immense physical, emotional and financial challenge. And it takes over a year for the eye to completely heal from bilateral corneal transplant surgery.
After my vision was restored, I went back to college and received a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and a Masters in Nonprofit Management and Business from Regis University in Denver, Colorado. After years of drama, I rediscovered my love of photography. Throughout the years, as I fought against the disease, I’ve made it my life goal to help others overcome similar life challenges.
Through my work as a photographer and a public speaker, I seek to capture and share the beauty of the world as reseen through the eyes of a man who couldn’t see it clearly for over half of his life. I hope my HD images will help others to stop and appreciate not only the gorgeous world around us … that we all live in … but to seek the positive and not the negative, to help others … despite the trials and challenges we all struggle with.
Through my education in Nonprofit Management and Business, I also seek to raise awareness about what I experienced and offer help for those who have suffered from or continue to live with such a difficult prognosis … Keratoconus, Macular Degeneration, and other diseases of the eye.
Again, thank you for visiting my website and in sharing my vision.
Sincerely,
Peter Searle