Belief - St. Paraskevi - miracles sometimes happen

The #FlickrFriday theme of Belief reminded me of my copy of this icon. I bought it in the Byzantine Museum in Paphos, Cyprus about 20 years ago. It's a delightful museum and I particularly wanted to buy a reproduction of an amazing early Christian sculpture. The museum guard, who was also staffing the shop, had spotted that I had very poor sight and told me that I should buy a copy of the icon of St. Paraskevi, who is considered a healer of the blind. (By a happy coincidence, her name translates into English as Friday.) My new friend obviously believed sincerely in the Saint's powers and I was totally won over and went home with the reproduction. I only spotted the image of the eyes in the bowl when I looked with a magnifier back home. Like so many martyrs, St. Paraskevi had an extraordinary life - and death. See www.orthodoxchristian.info/pages/Paraskevi.htm
Over the twenty years following our visit to Cyprus, many technologies have emerged to help people with sight loss. I've used magnifying spectacles like the 12 times ones in this image for many years, but the most significant breakthrough was the iPhone with the VoiceOver screenreader which lets blind people use a smartphone with touch gestures and hear everything on the screen spoken to them. It can do even more; for example, the wonderful SeeingAI app from Microsoft speaks printed text and can even recognise and speak handwriting.
Maybe Paraskevi had a quiet word or two in Steve Jobs' ear.

Taken on: November 25, 2020

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Greek Orthodox Church « less

Groups appears in: • Blind Photographers • Visually-impaired photographers in the UK more » • Flickr Friday « less

Camera: Sony DSC-RX10M3, f/16.0, 1.6 sec, 21.3mm, ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony DSC-RX10M3
Lens:	24-600mm F2.4-4.0
Aperture:	f/16.0
Exposure Time:	1.6
Focal Length:	21.3mm
ISO:	200
Exposure Bias:	-0.3 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Saturation:	Low
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 9.4 (Macintosh)
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