Stargardt's Disease

                                                                         Right Eye

                                                                         Left Eye

What is it? It's an inherited form of juvenile macular degeneration that causes progressive vision loss usually leading to legal blindness. People with Stargardt's disease will have wavy vision, blind spots, blurriness, impaired colored vision and difficulty adapting to dim lighting.

What's going on in the picture? Its a funds autofluorescence image of the effects of Stargardt's disease.  The dark areas (hypo-autofluorescence) have already died off causing loss of vision in those areas.  The bright white areas (hyper-autofluorescence) will die off overtime.  The bright spots come from a build up lipofuscin which causes the cells to be overstressed.  Since the cells can't handle it, they will eventually die off and turn dark.  Unfortunately there is no treatment for Stargardt's disease.

Wilmington, NC

                                                        Carolina Beach, NC

                                                         Wrightsville Beach, NC

                                                               Seabreeze, NC

For these photos I used a neutral density filter & by doing so I was allowed to use a much slower shutter speed.  This effect caused so much motion blur that the water in the photos appears to be still.  That's one of the characteristics of a ND filter that I love.  The 1st photo is of the beach & beach water is never still!  So to be able to slow that down & transform it into something else is amazing to me.  In the 2nd photo there was a woman on a paddle board, paddling thru the middle of this picture. Because of the long exposure & her movement there is so much motion blur that she disappears.  These photos ranged from 15-30sec exposure time.

Wisteria Vines

                                 

I don't know how to explain this thing known as wisteria vines.  My top overall photo does no justice to the "massive-ness" of the entire thing.  So, I came upon this thing one day when I decided to take the back road home & besides the size of it I find the way that it grows very captivating.  The way one stem intertwines with another is amazing....just something I saw on my way home.  For me this is such an amazing thing to see that sometimes I'll take the back road just to drive pass it. I can't help myself from staring at it.  This is the 2nd time this wisteria vine has appeared on my blog.

Rick