I’ve been living in Boulder, Colorado for over five years and when I first moved here I was freelancing as a photojournalist for various local newspapers and magazines. While I was getting to know the area I kept a notepad full of possible story ideas to shoot. My list consisted of anything from interesting businesses, to people, to events and one of those ideas was about a local blind coffee roaster named Gerry Leary. I don’t remember how I learned about The Unseen Bean coffee shop but I was immediately intrigued and it went on my list of things I wanted to document someday.
Well someday arrived about a month ago when I was asked to shoot new photos for The Unseen Bean website. During my initial conversation with Liz, the woman in charge of the new website, I explained to her about my list and how I had always wanted to document Gerry’s story, she replied simply, “you’re hired.” A longtime friend of the roaster, she wanted someone who cared about the project and was passionate about making good photos and ultimately helping him succeed as much as she was.
I tagged along with Gerry and his seeing eye dog, London, as he visited his Boulder shop, made a deposit at the bank, navigated through town, caught the bus to his new shop in Lafayette and went through the roasting process.
“There are other ways to take in your world without sight,” Gerry says, ” you just have to adapt.” For someone whose life and career is based around my ability to see this is a hard concept for me to grasp but Gerry’s joy and just overwhelming drive to succeed at something he loves doing no matter what, is truly inspiring.
Read more about his story here:
http://www.theunseenbean.com/your-roaster/
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