This is a collection of three images created by three blind or partial sighted children in India and Nepal in 2016.

My vocational background is not a straight forward CV. I have a number of both academic and professional skills under my belt, so although some may see me as semi-retired, a phrase that never passes my lips, I am now on a play-it-forward mission whereby I use those skills to help others. I am an ENFJ, that makes me a people person and at its best, the people's person. I am now using a mix of Psychology and Clinical Hypnotherapy to help young people who suffer or have deep anxiety issues following natural disasters or trauma. I have previously worked in Special Educational Needs and those with Learning Difficulties so at this stage of my life, I am well placed to offer a voluntary paediatric counselling service which is on a totally different level from "normal" trauma aftercare.

​

I have some very strong views about how humanity does a lot of things and the art of compassion when injected with a commercial agenda, often leads to huge amounts of resources (read that as money) being raised from the general public and then getting burnt up in silly admin costs and staff wages. To this date I still struggle to understand why charities like BBC Comic Relief (who in 2011 raised over £120 Million), which is possibly one of the world's most successful charities (both from a financial point of view and service delivery), chief executive Kevin Cahill’s salary rose to £130,823 ... to me, if you work for a charity, then you should give both your love and your time for free - afteral it is a charity... and all of this talk about if you want the best you have to "buy" the best is an equation that I do not fully understand or appreciate because all too often all this does is buy the one with the biggest mouth not the biggest balls..

 

SO... Here is my deal. I love to travel and rather than spends silly amounts of money on hotels and daft travel packages, I will link up with various community projects around the world who's communities have suffered a natural disaster. I will then arrange with a community leader to come and work with children who have been hurt or traumatised from some incident and live, as they do, eat as they do and have them ferry me around and show me stuff off the beaten track (in order for me to indulge in my landscape photography passion). In return I will work for them, I will work with them, often with local SEN or SPD children; often I will elect to work with blind or partially sighted kids and in return I will usually contribute around US/$2500 into that family/community for the opportunities they give me to live with them; this covers my living costs and local transportation for me and the children that I will work with and sometimes their carers.

What I do is use a program of clinical hypnotherapy in which I teach the children a SEN friendly game in which photography becomes the medium of communication that links us.

​

From my perspective, I get to immerse myself into the culture and feel what they feel. I don't need a fancy hotel, I take my own memory foam pillow with me and I am sorted because I don't sleep alot and I can sleep on anything. On this project occasion, I have elected to do 7 days voluntary work in India and then another 7 days in Nepal and then come back and do another 7 days in a different part of India. I will have totally funded project costs for these 21 days and in return I get to see some of India and Nepal by travelling and living as they do for those three weeks.

 

This is a project that has no commercial agenda, it serves no other purpose than to give three children with a disability a chance to do something they would never otherwise have had the chance to do and follows on from me teaching bike repairs last year when I took my mountain bike to the Philippines and Bali and worked with a group of children over there and did exactly the same thing. I followed that project up with 7 days in Kuala Lumpur and 7 days in Thailand.

​

For me, this is proper charity, I get to deliver my money, into the hands of those who need it, there is no expensive admin to get in the way; many of these people prefer the US Dollar over their own currency and I know because I can see, that the families I work with, totally appreciate what I am doing. I gain loads in the process and to date, nothing on this planet has given me more pleasure.

SO.... I started off with seven days in Delhi, to take a small group of three children, and their assistants who (the children) are all either blind or partially sighted, speak good English and teach these three kids all aged 10-11, something I love, PHOTOGRAPHY.

Seems like a tall order but I shall be using a system I devised years ago when teaching special needs, called the Trigger Point Mind Game, a system for learning disabled students, where basically I put the child into an imaginary 9 sided 3D cube and each cube is then sub-divided into sides with a compass reference, as in N, S, E, W: Technical speaking they (as a person) are point 9 and it has eight sides around it.

So what you end up with is basically a matrix which has 36 (but we only use 24 of them) reference points. My job is to get the kids to see this colourful map in their head and then for me to discover what each kid likes and then to go out and get them to photograph that subject, with me controlling the tecky bits of the camera based on their visual aid assistants description of things to each child and all based on my 36 map points and good teaching skills.

So for example, say the kid wanted to photograph their school building, they become the centre of the cube; their head is north, their feet are south and the left hand is west and their right hand is east.. we assume everything is in front of them as you don’t photograph behind yourself, you just turn around and take the picture. So with me pointing the kid towards the school building I get them to imagine that they are on the middle floor of that building but outside and I then give them a colourful graphic verbal description of that building based on my 36 point grid.. (but their actually 24) they then try to imagine my as “accurate as possible” description and tell me what they now see and want in the photograph and how they see it in their mind. I then compose the image based on their 3D grid feedback and once the picture is taken, I then feedback to them what is actually in it based on the grid system… and we fine tune it as we go along until I have what they see and both the picture and their image match up.. Job done..

Most people who have a visual disability have most of their other key senses heighten… what I am attempting to do is take advantage of this by teaching a visual mapping system that allows us both to be seeing the same things so that when we both refer to coordinated points we both know what we are both visualising to be there.. So effectively they are teaching me how to see as a blind person and I can see from today they are loving it, cos they have the power to make me literally, stand still and wonder what the heck I am not just looking at but what I think I can see..

 

IMAGE NUMBER ONE

All words from this first image are those of Rekha, I have simply taken her words and put them down in English. I have then had the words read back to her in English and in Punjabi. She is happy for me to use these words and her father, Mr Bhandari is happy for me to use his photograph.

 

Hello everyone, my name is Rekha and I have Microphthalmia, it is a condition I inherited at birth. I would like to spend my time with Erskine photographing my daddy. My dad sells Masala grain down by the Water Palace and I would like to record him working. I don’t really remember what my dad looks like only what he sounds like and he sounds old but he is a funny man and I know my mummy loves him. He used to blame himself for smoking stuff and that was what he thought made me lose my sight but we both know that is not true. Nobody has ever asked me to take photographs before so this will be my first time to touch a camera and I am excited.. at Water Palace Jaipur.