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Detached

February 22, 2015 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

No, not a feeling of detachment… a retinal detachment.

Some of you already know that I experienced a retinal detachment in my left eye late last week. To cut to the chase, the results of the medical procedure look good, and I’m very optimistic about the eventual outcome. Now that I’m recovering I thought I’d reply to all of the messages, questions, and support here in one place… and express gratitude for everyone’s concern and sympathy. Thank you!

So, what happened?

I’ve had the usual “floaters” in my eyes for a long time, so I didn’t pay much attention when I started seeing more of them in my left eye a while back — I figured it was just part of the typical process for aging eyes. However, late last week I noticed a dark “shadow” in the lower peripheral vision of my left eye, and it gradually expanded to become a significant dark area where I could not see. Since I helped my mother through an episode like this some years ago, I had a pretty good idea that I was experiencing a retinal detachment, and I got to the doctor fairly quickly.

Retinal detachment is not uncommon, especially when the vitreous in our eyes detaches as we age, sometimes creating small tears in the retina. Fluid can then get beneath the retina, pushing it up from the structures underneath and cutting off blood flow, and then “turning out the lights” in that portion of the eye.

The first ophthalmologist quickly confirmed what I suspected and referred me to a senior ophthalmologist — who, it turned out, was the same doctor who had treated my mother many years ago. His exam confirmed the bad news that I did have a retinal detachment, but against that background there was quite a bit of relatively good news: the detachment was in the periphery of my vision and not beneath the macula, there appeared to be only a single tear in the retina, the detachment was in the upper half of my eye (things that appear “low” in our vision are projected on the upper part of the retina), we had likely caught it quickly enough, and I don’t have risk factors such as diabetes or previous eye surgery. Continue reading Detached →

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Garden Path

February 22, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A pathway through a Japanese garden

This will be another relatively short post today, for reasons I explained in yesterday’s photo of the day post. Late last November we spent a few days in Southern California at Thanksgiving, and it turned out that two of three kids, their spouses/significant others, and more were there, too. We ended up driving up to San Marino to a place I had not been to before the Huntington Library [And Too Many Other Things To List] in San Marino. Later in the day we ended up visiting some of the extensive gardens there, including the Japanese Garden. This is one of two photographs from that location that I ended up liking — and, oddly, both are black and white. In this very quiet scene a wooden bridge jogs to one side in the middle of its path across this area.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Riparian Thicket, Yosemite Valley

February 21, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hazy afternoon winter light in a thicket of trees along the banks of the Merced River, Yosemite Valley

A shorter than usual post today, as I’m dealing (successfully!) with an unexpected eye problem, and one effect of the treatment is that I need to minimize computer/reading/writing time for a few days. (The short story is that I had retinal detachment, we caught it right away, were able to treat it on an out-patient basis, I’m home, and the results look fine. In short, what looked scary at first appears to be heading towards an excellent outcome.) So, briefly…

A week ago I was in Yosemite Valley for about two hours between visits to a couple of other places, and I had time to photograph around one of the large meadows late in the day, as the afternoon sun was dropping toward the tops of the cliffs and the hazy air became luminous. I wandered over to a section of the Merced River where I like to photograph cottonwood trees in spring and fall, and looking down the river I saw this little vignette in the backlight.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese in Blue Sky

February 20, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Thousands of Ross’s Geese in the San Joaquin Valley winter sky

And, yes, another photograph of thousands of geese wheeling overhead in the San Joaquin Valley sky. They tend to do that this time of year. The cause of this eruption of geese was a bit different from the usual. Typically, when they are flocking in pastures and similar areas, something sets them off — a predator, a low flying plane, who knows what else — and an entire flock will suddenly take to the air en masse, in a maelstrom of flapping wings and noise. We had stopped near a large group in a field, from which smaller groups were constantly coming and going, when another vehicle pulled up behind us. Out hopped a half-dozen young girls who proceed to run down the road, setting of the geese. (For the record, you aren’t supposed to do this. They are young. They will learn. :-)

Because the flock was so close, the first photographs I made mostly featured close up walls of geese. But eventually they widened the circle of their flight, looping round beyond this little brushy grove out in the flatlands. I zoomed out to see if I could get a larger view, and although I was shooting a 100-400mm lens, 100mm was “wide” enough to take in thousands of geese, the landscape, and the gradient of color in the sky as it transitioned from the lighter colors of the foggy atmosphere near the ground to the deeper blue of winter sky far above.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Detached

Garden Path

Riparian Thicket, Yosemite Valley

Geese in Blue Sky

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.