A gifted eye for photography: cerebral palsy doesn’t
stop 13-year-old boy
By LESLIE WILLIAMS 6:05 p.m., Friday, March 13,
2009
A Gifted Eye for Photography
Cerebral palsy doesn't stop 13-year-old from pursuing
his passion
Matt Milligan has a natural eye for photography.
He doesn’t have the hand for it, but patience and
that natural eye more than help him make up for it.
Matt, 13, was born with ataxic cerebral palsy.
Doctors told his parents he might never walk.
“I have trouble with my fine motor skills,” says
Matt, a Bonita Springs home school student. “Sometimes
my hands shake, so I want an image stabilization lens
(for his camera).”
Matt finds ways around his shaky hands, though. He
takes lots of photos of the same subject, knowing at
least one will turn out, and uses a monopod.
“Before he got his monopod, we were his tripod,” says
his mom, Lisa Milligan. “We’d stand there and hold our
hands under his arms.”
Matt’s foray into photography has been quite an
odyssey. His first experience was at the age of 9 with a
35-mm camera at his brother’s graduation from flight
school.
“I asked my dad, ‘Since you guys have a digital now,
could I have the Minolta 35?’ ” Matt says.
Once the photos were processed, Matt says, his
parents realized his photos outstripped their own.
“When we came back from that trip with the
photography, we said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” Lisa
Milligan says with a laugh.
Lisa and her husband, Mark, knew when he was born he
would have a tough road ahead of him. But between
excelling at long-distance running with the Special
Olympics and delving headlong into his photography, Matt
has surprised everyone, including his parents.
“We just look at him in awe,” Lisa Milligan says.
“He’s an inspiration. When he was born, we didn’t know
what was going to be wrong with him. We were amazed when
he learned how to ride a bike.”
Now, when Matt is not doing school work, he spends
his afternoons exploring his neighborhood and the
beaches of north Collier County and Bonita Springs. It
is a young photographer’s dream to grow up in an area
overflowing with wildlife, wilderness and stunning
coastal sunsets.
Some of the photos he takes require little more than
for him to step out his front door.
But his one-time photography teacher, Garth Francis,
says Matt’s skills go beyond simple luck with his
subjects.
“He demonstrated amazing skills, not only for his
age, but also for some of the issues he deals with,”
said Francis. “I was very impressed with what he came
back with, just after the first class.”
Francis said when he taught Matt a year ago, Matt was
his youngest student ever — by about 40 years. And many
of the retirees in Francis’ photography class were
equally amazed by what Matt did.
“But, what was interesting was he just had one
question after another,” said Francis.
At one point, Francis said he turned to ask the rest
of the class if they had any questions because he was
concerned Matt might be taking away time from other
students.
“And one woman said, ‘No, let him ask. He’s asking
all of the questions I can’t even think to ask,’”
Francis said.
Matt has started to gain recognition in the Bonita
Springs community for his work, showing it at the Bonita
Springs Art League, and most recently, at the February
Side Street Artists Show in Bonita. His work was shown
at the 52nd annual Art in the Park show in downtown
Naples March 7.
“He just had an eye,” says Lisa Milligan. “So, we did
a couple of classes at the art league and he entered the
shows and he got in.”
Matt says he would love to turn his passion into a
career — he gets inspired by the work he sees in
National Geographic magazine and is interested in
becoming a news photographer. Francis says the goal is a
realistic one.
“I think the sky would be the limit for him,” Francis
says. “The only thing that might plague him is just
simply his age.”
For now, though, Matt is keeping it homegrown.
“I would like to do a fundraiser show for, like, the
Shelter for Abused Women and Children, Habitat for
Humanity or the Special Olympics,” Matt said.
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