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/

After 8 hectic weeks of chemistry for UCB summer session, it’s finally over. I’m glad that I now have time to work on some photos/projects and update a few things. A while ago I mentioned doing a photo shoot for my friend Romeo’s 21st birthday:

I particularly value this set of photos because it was quite a mind exercise that yielded great results. In a mere hour, I thought of visual concepts (for the theme ‘Twisted’), did his make-up and pulled off a DIY white backdrop in my garage! I love opportunities to be innovative :)

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a good picture of the set up:

But there you have it — evidence that costly backdrops are a waste of money when you can merely hang a plastic sheet or use a white board instead! Good luck to any of you who wish to pursue this project!