Reading and responding to Naraht’s posts on needing some little details got me thinking of eye dominance again. I suppose lots of folks don’t really think about which eye is dominant, certainly not as they do hand-dominance.

Not sure what eye is dominant for you? test it here.

I’m one of those rare-ish people who are right-handed and left-eyed (and for those of you wondering, right-footed). For me, this impacts me in a couple ways. As a photographer, this means I’m looking through the viewfinder with my left eye instead of my right. For me to try and use my right, it feels incredibly uncomfortable. With my dSLR, this eye-orientation hasn’t been much of a problem since I can just shift the camera over a bit and still manipulate the controls with my right hand (this must be a problem for left-handed people though). Apparently (though this has only been googled and not researched by me in journal articles, though I might give that a whirl), photographers have a higher incidence of the cross-dominance. Maybe it’s that left-brained right-brained thing.

Lately, it’s been impacting me because of the dominant hand switch in my fencing. I’m right handed, so the entire time I’ve fenced (over two years), I’ve fenced right handed, with my right hand and right leg leading. Since I’ve torn my right rotator cuff, I’ve had to switch to left handed (left hand leading, left leg leading). I expected that the finger/arm control would be an issue and it hasn’t, aside from needing to build up that thumb muscle. However, leg control has been an issue since my right leg Insists It Really Wants To Be The Leading Leg.

Hmmm.

Categories: distracted