Pod Insights Personally Short Sighted, Episode 4: How to be photographer when you can’t see About this episode After an unsuccessful eye surgery, Graham feels estranged from his camera. Blind photojournalist Samantha Hurley https://www.instagram.com/reportingblind/ offers a different perspective before she leaves to photograph the 2024 Paralympic games in Paris.
Special thanks to Sam Hurley.
For more about Sam Hurley’s work visit https://samanthahurley.myportfolio.com/ https://samanthahurley.myportfolio.com/
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hi, I just had to tell you that I think your podcast has changed my life.
0:06 Speaker 01 Season one of Sold a Story hit a nerve. It was about teaching kids to read.
0:11 Speaker 02 We have gotten this wrong in New York and all across the nation.
0:15 Speaker 01 Now we're back with a new season. This time, we go beyond reading.
0:19 Speaker 00 I've literally been told by my district that I should not be teaching math. I should be facilitating math.
0:26 Speaker 01 I'm Emily Hanford. Go to your podcast app and follow Sold a Story.
0:31 Speaker 03 This is a CBC Podcast.
0:35 Speaker 04 My name is Graham Isidore. You're listening to Short-Sighted.
0:40 Speaker 05 Always constantly comparing myself. Always constantly comparing myself. So my sight appears.
0:50 Speaker 06 So is this one or two? Which one's better? One or two? Two? Okay.
1:05 Speaker 04 When I was 26, I had preventative eye surgery. It was supposed to stop my vision loss from progressing. The surgery was something I had put off for years, in part because at the time, the procedure was still fairly new. If a doctor was going to poke something sharp directly into my eye, I wanted to make sure they knew exactly what they were doing. And in part, because I couldn't actually afford it. The surgery cost $5,000. I was working as a freelance journalist to support my career in independent theater, which is sort of like saying I was supporting my career in artisanal glassblowing by moonlighting in decorative pottery. $5,000 could have been a million. My optometrist was unimpressed with my decision to delay the surgery. "Don't you want to get better?
1:49 Speaker 04 What cost can you really put on good eyesight, anyway?" The second question seemed particularly egregious. We both knew the answer. The cost was $5,000.
2:02 Speaker 04 After much convincing and some financial help from my mom, I finally decided to take the plunge.
2:10 Speaker 04 The procedure itself is a blur.
2:14 Speaker 04 There was a flash of light.
2:17 Speaker 04 The humming sound of medical equipment. The lingering smell of burnt flesh.
2:29 Speaker 04 Afterward, in a painkiller haze, a nurse walks me through what happens next. In a few weeks, my vision should stabilize. After that, they'll run some tests. From there, the team would fit me for specialty contact lenses. And just like that, I'd be able to see like a normal person again. Some time passed. There were appointments, follow-ups, questions, more questions. Eventually, we realized something had gone wrong.
3:02 Speaker 04 My vision did not stabilize. The eyes never adjusted to how they were before the surgery.
3:09 Speaker 04 Because of a constantly changing prescription, the specialty contacts, which cost another five grand to fit, were a nonstarter.
3:18 Speaker 04 My sight was worse than before the procedure. And slowly, it would continue to get worse from there.
3:26 Speaker 04 For a while, I felt a bit lost. I was worried about what the future might look like, or not look like. I spent a lot of time in bed, desperately wanting to feel like I had any control over the situation, which is kind of how I started taking pictures.
3:44 Speaker 04 Photography isn't the most obvious coping mechanism for sight loss, but capturing photos gave me power over something visual, a better understanding of my own perspective. And after the surgery, that feeling was very important to me. Starting out, my procedure was understandably clumsy. Okay, we're just gonna try to see where the light is right now. I'd buy a cheap DSLR starter pack. I'd call up some friends. We'd try to find a cool outfit or location. Walk like two steps towards me.
4:14 Speaker 04 I'd bring my camera to a concert or event, and from there, I'd take shots. Hundreds, thousands, figuring things out on the fly.
4:25 Speaker 04 The results were hit or miss. With my eyes, I had a general sense of what a picture might look like. But in the field, specifics, things like colors, compositions, lighting, they were largely guesswork. Later, at home, I'd blow things up on my computer. Zooming in, I'd scroll through dozens of shots, trying to find something usable. Then I'd spend hours meticulously editing the best work. Against the odds, with some practice and some luck, I got pretty good at it.
4:58 Speaker 04 People use my photos for headshots and dating profiles. They'd ask me to shoot weddings. A few of my pictures ended up in magazines and the newspaper. It's an odd thing to talk about why people like the photos. It feels a bit braggadocious, especially when you can't see any examples of why I'm referring to. But at their best, I think my favorite photos captured a certain kind of vibe. A former love interest said that I made all the men in my photos look more handsome than they were. And the women looked uglier than in real life, but cooler than their actual personalities. She didn't mean it as a compliment, which is how I knew she was telling the truth. Anyway, taking pictures became a big part of how I saw myself, my only real hobby.
5:40 Speaker 04 Still, with a progressive eye condition, I was worried that I was on borrowed time. For most people, keratekonos eventually stabilizes on its own. But I was not most people.
5:56 Speaker 04 In the last few years, I noticed how my eyes had started to impact my day job. I noticed that it was harder to spend time on screens and read street signs. But I didn't notice how my sight was starting to change the way I took photos. That, or I tried to ignore it. It was little things at first. I'd take a portrait, and I couldn't tell if the foreground or the background was in focus. Subtle changes in facial expression, the type of thing that can make or break a photo, got harder to tell apart. Then there was the bigger stuff. I was struggling to see my photos on the camera screen. Same with the viewfinder. Even on the computer, the edits I'd make were harder to see. The tricks I'd picked up weren't working anymore.
6:40 Speaker 04 It shook my confidence. Going through my camera roll, you could see the shift. Bold, interesting portraits and moody streetscapes gave way to dull, repetitive shots. There were dozens of different edits on the same picture, trying to make something work. Eventually, there were less and less photos. I stopped wanting to take pictures. In the last half year, I barely picked up my camera at all.
7:14 Speaker 04 A few months back, I started volunteering as a part of a group called Shared Bylines. The group places journalism students from marginalized backgrounds with mentors a bit further along in their career. I was paired with Samantha Hurley. Sam has albinism. She's been legally blind since birth. The team at Shared Bylines thought we'd be a good fit because neither of us see very well. During one of our first chats, Sam let me know that at school, what's really piqued her curiosity is photojournalism. From a young age, the camera helped her see the world.
7:46 Speaker 05 My first time picking up a camera, I was about 12, and my friend had brought hers over. And I just did some videos to research before she came over because we were, you know, 12 and having a sleepover. And we were like, "Let's show each other our hobbies." And so I thought I'd do some research so I didn't, you know, I wouldn't look stupid. I know how to sort of use her camera. And I came across like depth of field and bokeh and this idea that like the camera can focus on something up close and make the entire background blurry. And I remember like looking at someone next to me and asking, "Is that how the world looks to sighted people? Like, is that what y'all see?" And they were like, "Yeah, kinda, yeah."
8:28 Speaker 05 And so when I picked up the camera, and I remember I focused on a blade of grass, and then everything else got blurry. And it was like the clearest I'd ever seen, like this blade of grass. Like, I'd never seen that clearly because of my vision. And it was just a really, like, I saw the world completely differently through that viewfinder.
8:47 Speaker 04 The purpose of the mentorship was supposedly to help Sam navigate the ins and outs of the journalism industry, the particular challenges that can come up when you don't see like everyone else. But hearing her talk, I felt a bit embarrassed. There was such excitement about the work. She seemed giddy on possibility. Her photos reflected that, too. Even in the context of a portfolio for a student newspaper, there's a warmth to her shots. They're vibrant. Sam sees less than I do. She's making it work. So why did I feel so hesitant? I thought a lot about the answer. Then I decided to talk to Sam about it.
9:32 Speaker 05 And it's like, but not everyone sees the same way. And so I remember a day that I brought this up in class and I realized like that was where so much of my imposter syndrome was coming from was because I've been holding myself to the standard of everyone else having 2020 vision and like measuring my, my skills to that when, you know, in reality, I see differently. So I'm going to have a different path to the end result. So yeah, I've definitely had those days.
9:58 Speaker 04 The worry was that by talking to Sam openly and honestly about my situation, I'd be crushing the dreams of a hopeful young student. Welcome to the business. I'm having a difficult time. But the chat didn't go that way. Instead, I think we were both kind of grateful to admit that sometimes it can feel hard.
10:18 Speaker 05 That sort of being self-conscious is so real, especially for us with photo when we're literally visually impaired photographers, like it's not just taking a photo for us. It's like, it's so much, it's so much deeper because it's thinking about our visual world. And that's kind of like what rules our lives. So I feel like it's only, only natural, unfortunately, to like have those feelings sometimes.
10:45 Speaker 04 There's this thing when you're talking to a person who has a shared experience, a kind of shorthand that doesn't happen with other people. Once I'd explained what was going on, we got into it a bit about our process, comparing notes about best practices, helpful pointers. Sam walked me through the finer details of how she takes photos, the adjustments she makes to the settings and the setups, the stuff she uses to get the most out of her shots. She also offered an idea that might be a bridge for starting up again. Session four is a mentor and I'm the one being given advice.
11:22 Speaker 05 I'm always constantly comparing myself to like my sighted peers. And something that helped me, I think you or anyone listening to this that's in a similar space to us should do is I did a how I see photo essay. And just for a couple of days, I had my camera with me and I just thought about, made a big like a spreadsheet and thought about, okay, how do I make photos to show what I see, how I see it, what I can see and what I can't see? And that brought me back to the very first time I picked up a camera and I had that magic with it. I don't know, the biggest thing I'd recommend is you should totally do a how I see photo essay. Kind of changed my world a little bit.
12:07 Speaker 04 I've been taking my camera around again, trying to follow through on Sam's advice. I try to catch the light sensitivity and halos, the ghost images and double vision.
12:19 Speaker 04 There's nothing I love yet, but the process has me rethinking what makes a good photo or a photo I remember. I've been wondering what happens if I build the mistakes into the style, if the imperfections and limitations make it feel more like me.
12:35 Speaker 04 A future with heavy flash, fuzz, a bit of grit. That feels kind of new. But I don't know what happens next.
12:57 Speaker 04 Another thing I've been wondering is what happens next for my eyes? The doctors want me to try the surgery again, then a second run at the contact lenses. I've been weighing the pros and cons.
13:12 Speaker 04 I don't know what happens next, but it all keeps changing.
13:28 Speaker 04 On the next episode, how to surf when you're blind.
13:36 Speaker 04 Short Said was created and hosted by me, Graham Isador. Editing and sound design by Christopher Ross Hewer. Music and additional sound design by Ron Kelly. For CBC Podcast, the producer is Leah Simone Bowen. The sound designer is Julia Whitman. The coordinating producer is Roshni Nayar. Kate Evans is the senior producer. Tanya Springer is senior manager. And the executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. The director of CBC Podcast is R.F. Noorani.
14:09 Speaker 04 Remember to subscribe and follow Short Sighted wherever you get your podcasts.
14:20 Speaker 03 For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.
Previous Short Sighted, Episode 3: How to dance for people who don’t see Next Short Sighted, Episode 5: How to surf when you're going blind Page updated November 6, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated