Photographer and glaucoma patient Dale Neill
Dale Neill is the Lions Eye Institute’s independent consultant for the Eye to Eye Photographic Competition. He is experienced in running the Fremantle International Portrait Prize and stays involved in a range of different photographic training workshops, international tours and competitions.
We are so grateful to Dale for his support, guidance, expertise and wisdom in helping us deliver the Eye to Eye Photographic Competition. We have also enjoyed his sense of humour and natural talent for telling a story, both with photographs and words.
This is Dale’s story, in his own words, about his journey with photography and glaucoma…
“I was in my early 40s when I received the diagnosis of glaucoma from Dr Peter Richardson. It was a pretty dark afternoon. Glaucoma was the curve ball I hadn’t counted on.
My life had revolved around commercial photography, teaching photography at The University of Western Australia and TAFE, surfing and riding my Mercian bicycle a couple of hundred kilometres each week.
My tears dried quickly. Resilience, adaptation and medical intervention were my chosen tools. I drew on the words of George Eastman, founder of Kodak for inspiration.
‘Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. And you will know the secret of photography,’ said Eastman.
It’s probably no coincidence that physics was my best subject at school and the study of light and lenses was at the top of my list when I was in my mid-teens. George Eastman became my guiding light.
Glaucoma is the silent invader. It’s the thief in the night. You don’t know it’s there, but it is. Each and every night. Little by little, pixel by pixel, the glaucoma thief takes away your light. It’s a bit like putting on weight by one gram each day. You don’t notice it. But unlike being overweight there’s no glaucoma diet to replace the lost sight.
I adapted. I started using autofocus and wide-angle lenses. I bracketed exposures. My new cameras had white lettering on black bodies. I was very fussy to choose cameras that were engineered with great intuitive logic. I stopped putting black things on top of other black things. I reluctantly stopped racing down steep slopes at 80 kilometres per hour on my bike (my wife Marg threatened divorce if I continued). I used my tactile sense to adjust camera controls. These days I rely more on hearing than I did before and I’m certain my sense of smell has sharpened acutely. I can now smell a sheep ship, fresh cinnamon roll or a burning electrical wire before most other people.
Two decades ago, I became a fan of famous American photographer Margaret Bourke-White. Bourke-White said, ‘saturate yourself with your subject and your camera will all but take you by the hand.’
Great advice. When I covered the Boxing Day tsunami in India I was literally saturated in the subject. When I made images of returned prisoners of war in Hellfire Pass, Thailand I imagined I was there in World War II and those images are now with the Australian War memorial. I listen to people, not just their words but how they say them. I observe their movements. When I photographed ‘Farewell My Son’ and it was hung in the National Portrait Gallery, I was no longer a photographer, I was a part of the subject.
I hope I will be taking photographs until the day I die. Even if someone has to point me in the general direction and prop me up. I hope for the best, expect the worse and take whatever comes along with open arms… and my wide-angle lens.”
