I have cataracts. Of course there’s nothing unusual about that for someone of my age and I’m fortunate that, at least for the moment, it makes relatively little difference to my life. But I need extra light for reading, and I often struggle when trying to identify birds at the extremes of my binoculars’ magnification.

My photography, mostly, is unaffected. Modern autofocus lenses achieve a far greater degree of sharpness than those split-prism viewfinders that I grew up with, and the live view histogram on the back of the camera ensures that my exposure is spot-on even in the most difficult light. Processing my RAWS, I suppose that colour grading could be troublesome, but since I tend to prefer the native Olympus colours anyway, it’s something I do to only a fairly limited degree.

Getting the contrast right in the scene can be more challenging. One of the effects of cataracts is to reduce the micro contrast of some scenes, and I’ve learned to dial the contrast back slightly from my preferred settings in order to achieve a realistic effect.

One effect of cataracts that I’ve particularly noticed is their tendency to create a halation effect – a warm glow, effectively – around the highlights of a scene. I try to use this to my advantage. I enjoy the slight halation that you get from vintage lenses, and I often try to replicate it when editing an image.

All of which led me, recently, to try to replicate what it feels like to see the world through cataracts. I chose a photograph I took in the Baptistery at the Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa. There’s a strong element of dark and light in this scene which makes it easier to see the highlights glow, and the disorienting effect of looking down on the scene adds an element of abstraction. The detailed textures, too, allow me to demonstrate the impact of reduced contrast.

The edited version – trying to replicate a slightly exaggerated view of how I see the world – makes a few changes to the original photo:

• The contrast in the mid tones has been reduced
• The colour balance has been adjusted gently to warm the image
• The colour balance around the highlights has been further warmed
• The highlights have a gentle glow around them
• The microcontrast has been reduced – this can be seen particularly in the textures of the tiled floor at the top left of the photo
• Slight vignetting

To be clear, this edited photo is intended to represent the world as seen through my incipient cataracts. The effects of mature cataracts are far more extreme, and hopefully I’ll have my cataract surgery long before I reach that stage.