Photos Provide Vision Window : Eyesight: They can give the visually impaired an insight into things they otherwise might not be able to see.

Anyone seeing the three of us having lunch recently would not have thought that there was anything out of the ordinary: just three middle-aged guys talking about photography.

One of my companions was architectural photographer Bill Lebovich, showing off his new book, “Design for Dignity,” a handsome volume that documents how public spaces--such as Baltimore’s magnificent Oriole Park at Camden Yards--can use beauty and intelligent design to comply with the provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The other fellow, by far the most ebullient of the trio, was George Covington, who besides being a photographer is a lawyer, former journalism teacher, onetime aide to former Vice President Dan Quayle and something of an inventor, having come up with the idea for tactile and pictographic maps of Washington to aid the visually impaired.

Midway through his linguine, Covington whipped out a point-and-shoot camera and leaned over very close to me.

“I see you have a beard,” he said. “You must be a liberal.”

Covington snapped a picture. “So I can see what you look like,” he said.

“Most people see to photograph,” Covington is fond of saying. “I photograph to see.”

Legally blind, Covington says he has, at best, “5% of normal vision on the periphery of my right eye.” As his sight degenerated over the past 20 years, Covington discovered that photography--and the ability to freeze an image, especially in black and white--kept open a “priceless channel of perception.”

“It was startling to look at a self-portrait,” he wrote last year, “and realize I had stopped seeing myself in the mirror. It was equally startling to realize I had stopped seeing the faces of my friends and relatives.

“If I had not become seriously interested in photography at that point in my life, I would today consider myself blind. As it is, as long as I can photograph, I will not be blind.”

If there was a theme for lunch this day it was alternative uses of photography. Lebovich can knock your socks off with his beautifully rendered, precise photographs of architectural exteriors and interiors. But with the exception of an assortment of such shots on the cover of his book, Lebovich’s work in “Design for Dignity” is more of a documentary nature, showing how everyday environments have been built--and, in some cases, modified--to accommodate all people, regardless of their abilities.

In Covington’s case, photography not only has given him a way to enhance the sight he has, but to create for others a way to do such seemingly mundane things as enjoy an art museum. Now working for the National Park Service’s Office of Accessibility, Covington is a prime mover behind having photographs readily available to the visually impaired in museums and other public spaces.

“If a person were to try to move close enough to a large painting, for instance, to see detail, he would lose overall perspective,” Covington wrote in the Journal of Museum Education. “If he backed away far enough to have an overall perspective, he would lose detail. . . . An 11-by-14-inch photograph allows the person to see both detail and perspective. A person could stand before a canvas such as Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’ and use the photograph to see the subtle details he would otherwise miss. The black-and-white photograph would (also) give overall perspective, allowing the mind’s eye to see the painting’s colors, shades and hues.”