Story of a Wheelchair Photographer

My name is John Freeman. I am the CEO of the Freebook Platforms Corporation and Springfield Daily News. 

I have always seen the world in images and I am enthused by light. Having the ability to capture images how I see them, is the challenge.

When I started to photograph more seriously during my 30th, I was looking for my niche, trying as many photographic forms as possible, dabbling in sports, news, landscape, music and people.

However, my focus was brought into sharp detail when, following a spinal stroke in 2025 at age 40, I was left paralysed from the waist down.

I decided to not give up on photography and not accepting it as just another one of those things I was going to have to accept in my new life as a paraplegic.

What I hadn’t counted on was that I couldn’t just give up ‘seeing’ that easily.

Now I had to learn to see the world from a lower standpoint than before. 

When I moved to a high definition format camera and started to travel, then I found my real challenge. That challenge was to photograph people in their own height and me adjusting to a lower level. 

Though I cannot blend into the background, I have learned over the years that I can present myself to my subjects. They are generally as intrigued by me, as I am by them, which helps me create an engagement. Most people feel sorry for me and keep treating me like I cannot do it on my own. Until I completely blow their minds. I actually created a clear and beautiful digital environment. People are surprised that my wheelchair doesn't slow me down. In fact it makes me faster than they expected. I ride like I am standing 20 feet tall. 

A photographer in a wheelchair with a camera. Unheard of. It is not something one sees often in many of the states I have had the privilege to travel to. Miami Florida is my favorite place to be. But I'm a Missourian.

I am inspired by the way people live, how their faces tell stories, often of hard work and struggle to survive.

Experiences that we, living in more privileged circumstances, often take for granted. The recent history of a place or city fascinates me, I try to photograph people who would have lived through or even will live through times of great change in their country. Other times I’m just drawn by the colours, the composition or the activity of subjects.

My natural inclination is to get up early for good light and photograph what's on the horizon or even the streets to build an essence of place. The constraints of having my camera mounted on my wheelchair helped me realise that portraiture through street-work suited my way of working and enabled me to portray a sense of the atmosphere of place through the people who live there. For a year now I thought this was something of a curse. But after 6 months I am starting to walk again..however I will always use a wheelchair. My body is only 35% healed. Which means I can stand for short periods of time with my crutches. Long enough to mount the tripod and focus the lens. A wheelchair mounted camera display made my life exponentially better.

 To this day my job has been a blessing. Not just as a journalist but because my daughter Nora came up with a new support group idea.  Wheelchairs Anonymous. A social place for disabled people to get together and socialize. Help each other with moral support and educating the people who have not been in one very long.

The opportunity to mentor a few kids after their accidents is truly a blessing. While I embrace the opportunity to be a big brother. It's like they teach me. I learned how to embrace success like nothing before.

As a journalist and photographer. I am climbing to enormous heights. That I would have never ever done before. 

This disability taught me that prior to the spinal stroke. I was not living up to my true potential. I learned things about myself that I never knew I was any good at.

This is the life of a photographer in a wheelchair.

Sincerely CEO John Freeman.