B.C. eye surgeon finds beauty through a camera in unexpected places

Adam finds how a boy with poor vision grew up to take photographs of resilient flowers.

VICTORIA — While Angus MacDonald is searching for something specific, he pauses his hunt to take a picture of what many might dismiss as junk.

“Look at that mess over there,” Angus points his camera at a pile of squished cars. “I know it’s junk. But there’s beauty in the junk.”

Sure, there are interesting shapes, textures, colours, but Angus is also seeing something else.

“There’s a thousand cars over there,” Angus smiles. “And each has a story.”

After Angus wonders how each driver’s life might be unfolding, he reveals his life began out of focus.

“I couldn’t see,” Angus says. “Total blur.”

So, you can image how young Angus must have felt to get his first camera and figure out how to use its lenses to capture the world around him with not just creativity, but clarity.

“It was fun to be able to take a picture and then see it,” Angus says. “That probably led me into ophthalmology.

For decades, Angus worked as a successful eye surgeon, running a prestigious practice.

“I was working hard, constantly on the go,” Angus says. “And then, at some point I said, ‘Is this all there is?’”

Angus answered that question by picking up a camera again, and finding there was so much more.

“You pull back from the freneticism of our normal world and just be in the moment,” Angus says before walking along searching for something to photograph.

Now this has become a daily mediation of sorts, using his camera to get out of his head and feel something in his heart.

“All of a sudden, ‘Oh god! Look at that little thing,’” Angus stops walking and points to a yellow flower growing in the crack in a rock wall. “There’s a story here!”

A story about how something so delicate can demonstrate so much strength.

“It’s the little flower’s courage to grown through the rock,” Angus crouches down to take a picture of it.

It’s a story that Angus is constantly searching to tell with his camera because it’s so perennially inspiring.

“Against all odds, you can do it,” Angus smiles.

Just like a boy with blurry vision can grow up to be a doctor who restores sight, before becoming a photographer who can focus on the beauty we’re often too busy to see.

“If you step back, take a breath, and look,” Angus smiles. “You’ll see, wow, there’s beauty everywhere.”