Resistance is Futile

Came across an interesting link today, courtesy of a Tweet a Twitter user posted. It seems a one-eyed Canadian filmmaker hooked up with a geek unemployed engineer to form the EyeBorg Project.

What's an EyeBorg? Well, if you're asking that you're not much of a Star Trek fan. Suffice it to say the Borg are all about integrating technologies and life-forms in the same host body. Oh yeah. They're also all about conquering and controlling and forcing into the "hive" just about anyone and everyone in the known universe. And they're fairly adept at doing so. Hence, the Borg's favorite thing to say, "Resistance is futile."

Back to today's update: The intrepid duo, filmmaker and engineer, are hoping to make history by embedding a small, transmitter-equipped, videocam in a prosthetic eye and replacing the filmmaker's non-functional, for-looks-only, glass eye with their invention. In this way, the filmmaker can be making a movie 24/7. Or at least during all his waking moments. It's sorta like a helmet-cam except, instead of the camera being mounted on someone's head, it's installed in someone's head. (Cue Twilight Zone theme.)

I was intrigued by this EyeBorg concept because, for about ten years or so, I was 100% blind in my right eye. And that was after many more years of the eye slowly going blind. The eventual blindness was a result of an injury (when I was a kid) that led to a "traumatic" cataract that turned the lights out in my right-eye.

I still worked as a photographer and videographer during my half-blind years. I did have to make some adjustments, e.g., I used my left-eye for looking into a viewfinder. I still do! Some habits die hard. But it was also a pain-in-the-keester as cameras tend to be ergonomically designed to accommodate right-eye viewing; more so with many pro video cams as their viewfinders are side-mounted, usually on the left side cuz the hand-grip is on the right side. It's a right-handed and right-eyed world it seems. Not sure if it's a mostly right-brained world.

During my monocular years, my world was mostly two-dimensional: It takes two eyes, i.e., binocular vision, to have an accurate sense of depth. Of course, two-dimensional sight matches the two-dimensional view that photography captures. So maybe it wasn't so odd being a one-eyed shooter? The vast majority of cameras are one-eyed, right? When playing poker, when it's my time to deal, I usually call one-eyed Jacks wild. Cuz that's how I once rolled: One-eyed and wild!

While cataract surgery is quite common if not routine, my cataract was unique, so the doctors said, and carried excessive risks when it came to its removal. Risks that included too-high odds of also losing the sight in my left eye. "Thanks Doc. But I think I'll pass on the surgery and make-do with one eye that still works."

Finally, just a handful of years ago, medical technology caught up with my eye and the cataract was removed and a synthetic lens was implanted. I call it my bionic eye. During the cataract surgery (in which the patient remains awake) and after a couple of hours into it, the surgeon told me she was having difficulty removing the cataract and she'd have to do it "the old fashioned way." Her words, not mine.

"You mean with a pick and shovel?" I asked.

She laughed, said "Yeah," and continued hacking and digging away at my eyeball.

The surgery was a complete success although it took about a month or so for my sight to return to normal, i.e., without having double vision. (An interesting way to view the world. But that's another story for another update.)

I'm only recounting my personal, one-eyed story because the EyeBorg guys got me to thinking whether I would've been willing to have a video camera installed in my eye-socket replacing my totally useless eye? Just before the surgery, my right eye had atrophied to the point where it looked as if it was looking "over there" instead of "over here," where I was actually looking. That was pretty weird and not something that did much for enhancing my vanity... which might have been a good thing anyway.

In my line of work, shooting tons of pretty girls, there's probably a few guys out there who would vote for me to have such a device installed, especially if I streamed what my Borg-eye was "seeing" on the internet. But that would make me a walking, talking, internet site! What if I forgot to turn it off during some, uhhh... private moments? Thank you. No. I'll pass on that idea.

Still, for those who have a blind-side, I mean an actual, visually-impaired blind side -- cuz plenty of people are half or completely blind in other ways -- replacing a useless eye, prosthetic or otherwise, with a video camera is an intriguing idea.

The idyllic-looking "pretty girl on a swing with faux flowers" is Chanell from... Yikes! About 5 or 6 years ago! Damn time flies! Anyway, this was during my heavy-handed processing days. (Hi! My name is Jimmy and I'm a Photoshopaholic.) Thankfully, I kicked the heavy-processing habit some time ago. Especially, Gaussian Blur! (The most over-used and abused of PS's tools.) Chanell captured with a Canon 20D or 10D, don't remember which and can't find the original to figure it out.

I lit Chanell with a single speedlite in front of her, for fill, and modified with a small-to-medium sized softbox. I also used a big, silver, shiny board behind her, reflecting Sol's magic photons.