Recently linked up with a very talented photographer, Justin Gonzaga of JustG Photography, to kick start a new series. After a day of brainstorming and moving from location to location on an impromptu shoot, we took a long, hard look at our equipment and decided to try something new — and the Repurposing Project was born! How else can we use our photography equipment? You’ll see below. It is always such a pleasure sharing techniques and ideas with fellow/photographers artists. The creative process is a beautiful thing! There’s nothing more awesome than putting two heads together and creating :) More to come soon!

Object: Umbrella

The two trends that I’ve found to be consistent with photography are the vintage and fish-eye effects. While the vintage effect can be created by film cameras, smart phones or photoshop and fish-eye lenses tend to be on the more expensive side, I figured — why not make something cheap and portable that is capable of producingboth effects? Nothing compares to the gratification of creating something on your own. This is the process it took to make a simple, affordable ($10) and fun fish-eye lens:

(Captions describe images from left to right.)

You can purchase a door peephole at your local hardware store. I purchased mine from Home Depot. For some, it may not be easy to come across film canisters. Fortunately, I have plenty of these lying around. This will be used as the reinforcement for the lens. I took off the cap and cut off the bottom of the canister to make a hollow cylinder.

It isn’t guaranteed that your peephole will fit perfectly into the film canister. To make it more fitting, I rolled up a thin piece of cardboard that would be thick enough to fit tightly into the canister and hold the peephole.

The outside of the of canister looks really plain, so I placed some stickers from my sticker bomb collection onto it to make it more aesthetically pleasing :) And that’s it! Place it into your bag whenever you go out with your point and shoot. Hold it over the lens, zoom in and shoot! Unfortunately the weather has been harsh so I haven’t had a chance to go outside and take some pictures. But here are some I took around the house:

ENJOY!

Coincidentally, I am participating in Word/Play, a genius idea by Kevin Huynh that forces you to create something new every week. Here’s how it works:

The rules are super complicated…
You have 24 hours to create something (anything) based on today’s word. When you’re finished with your earth-shattering creation, post it on your blog and send the link to kevin@kiwimonk.com. A recap will be sent out soon after. TODAY’S WORD IS: CIRCLE!

To learn more about Word/Play, visit: http://www.playonword.com/

A platform to safely express, cleverly connect, and collectively create.

Three hundred disposable cameras, preparing for a journey — potentially around the world.

The assembly line.

Find out more at: http://commoncam.org

SPREAD THE WORD!