Headlight: [hed-layht] literally, the projector light pointing at a presenter’s head and slowly burning out his or her retinas.
Experienced presenters can tell you that there is little difference between a moth and a professional speaker when forced to look into the light. More than two seconds of eye contact with that unflinching Cyclops will drag even the brainiest, most focused speaker into a tractor beam induced stupor that leaves audiences lost and bewildered as they try to follow the broken stutters of the broken presenter. Sitting in the gentle, ambient lighting of the average presentation venue, they have no idea what it feels like to have your rods and cones shaken up like cheap pancake batter until everything oozes out in an amorphous mess.
Wild hearts can’t be broken, but blindness isn’t necessarily an inevitable hazard of the speaking profession—unlike, say, jumping horses off of several-stories-tall platforms. Sure, struggle and strife build character and only make us stronger, but that’s no reason to seek out horrific ocular damage. So what can you do to protect yourself?
Plenty. For starters, try sunglasses: in addition to shielding your eyes, they’ll add a layer of mystery to your persona. Blindfolding works great for niche presenters, mainly magicians. Not facing the audience also solves the problem, though it does introduce new ones.
Or, try this simple approach: stop standing in front of the projector.
The Takeaway: Everything we do carries some level of risk. In the big picture, though, presenting really shouldn’t be a physically risky endeavor. Since managing emotions, nerves, facts and figures is complicated enough, try and keep from blinding yourself by putting the projector in a reasonable location.
