Countywide : Legally Blind, He Has Eye for Photos

Robert D. Wright has shown that with the use of modern technology, it doesn’t take sharp eyesight to take sharp pictures.

The 39-year-old Seattle resident, who is legally blind in both eyes, brought his auto-focus camera to Disneyland on Thursday to shoot cartoon characters for his “Breaking Down Barriers” photo montage. These images will be used for a theme poster focused on, well, theme parks. “I’m into bad puns,” Wright quipped.

He is hoping that photo equipment companies will display his poster at trade shows to spread the message that visually handicapped people can successfully use today’s high-tech cameras.

Wright was only 16 days old when he was blinded and nearly killed in a traffic accident. Today, his vision is 20/700, meaning that he must be 20 feet away to see something that a person with normal vision can see at 700 feet. Glasses improve his eyesight to 20/400.

“I see well enough to know what it is, but I can’t see details,” said Wright, who gets state assistance checks because of his disability.

But long before auto-focus cameras hit the market, Wright had taken up photography as a hobby. He later enrolled in a community college course--with mixed results, he admits. The instructor “didn’t exactly like” the fact that a blind student was in the class, and he was less than enthusiastic about Wright’s often-blurry photos.

Now that he uses an auto-focus camera, his images have improved to the point where a prominent film company donates film and processing services to Wright, and may possibly employ him as a spokesman.

At Disneyland, Wright spent his morning competing with throngs of children as he snapped photos of Mickey, Minnie, Jafar and Princess Jasmine. He planned to document Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in the afternoon.

“I love to photograph roller coasters,” he said. “I ride ‘em all.”