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Broad sight through a lens

Jeremy Broad is a local talent
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Many people work to master an art and strive to be the best at their creative outlet. But for Jeremy Broad, one talent is simply not enough.

Music, pictures, and video are only a sampling of his given talents. And still, his hardships are ones that need to be conquered daily.

In 1981, when he was just a baby, Broad had no eyesight due to cataracts,

After some complications during the removal process, his right eye was left with little sight.

Both eyes had glaucoma, but it went undetected for the first eight years of his life and deteriorated his sight even further.

“We went through several specialists before finding one in Calgary that was able to save my sight,” Broad said.

Unable to drive, Broad has to find his art in easily accessible places.

“It can be seen as a very humbling experience. Anytime you ever want to do anything somebody else needs to be involved with it, which means they need to have the time and desire to do so,” Broad said.

Taking pictures is a hobby for Broad, but he yearns to make it his career. Being self taught, he had to learn his craft by experimenting and working with different potentials. His goal when shooting is to take pictures that don’t need 20 minutes of editing. Instead, he just wants to capture what he can see with his own eye, as is.

“The world around you is right there waiting to be captured by a camera.”

Broad has also found a love in astrophotography, and has captured some stunning images and videos of storms, clouds, and even the northern lights.

At the end of April, Broad started to play with the time-lapse feature on his Nikon D5500 and started to take stunning videos from his elevated home.

“It allows me to compress time. Instead of just one picture of the stars at night, here’s a whole night’s worth of stars,” Broad said.

He enjoys taking pictures of Sayla, his expressive Shiba Inu, that is some-what trained to be his model.

“Sometimes she’ll look back at me and give me a little attitude,” he laughs.

Although Broad doesn’t have any sort of editing software, he finds the outcomes just the same and in a more technical sense.

“It’s good enough for now. You work with what you have,” Broad said.

Irma Wray, 74, is an acquaintance of Broad who met him at a garden tour and instantly fell in love with his work with music and pictures.

“He is a very bright young man (and) has a way with words,” Wray said.

When it comes to music, Broad has been writing for as long as he can remember, and much of his work has been self-released, and can be found online.

“With a creative heart, anything is possible.”

His music is just another release for his creative talent, and some of his recorded tracks go up to 45 minutes long.

Ever since he started shooting in 2003, it has been important for Broad to experiment with everything that he works with.

It would be the ideal situation to be able to sell his work, but the business of selling personal pictures gets harder every day.

Despite his hardships, Broad produces the projects that come to mind and shows them freely to people to see how they react to the piece, which has been a positive experience for him.

“In the world of the dreamer, the impossible is the only unknown.”