Fisheye Lo-Fi

I’ve always been a big fan of shooting with fisheye lenses. I like how they give my camera a unique view of the world, shrinking almost every element in a scene into a vast landscape even if it’s right next to the lens, and giving an exaggerated largeness to anything close to the lens in the center. With the virus still in full swing this summer, I’ve spent a lot of time alone on bike trails walking through the forest preserves of my county, and this has given me the opportunity to focus on shooting quiet, meditative videos focused on the natural elements around me. I’ve been using my Lomography Experimental Fisheye lens, a lo-fi plastic lens that gives me a warm, soft image that screams cheap plastic home movies camera from the 70’s, and I love the lo-fi looks I’ve been able to get out of it.

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Love for a Summer Land Seen Through a Pinhole

Me in the Forest

Summers in Lake County, Illinois are like heaven on earth. The light filters through the leave and dapples the ground with an animated display of green and white and yellow. The heat fills the yellow and green spaces between the trees, sits quietly on the blue and green water, with cicadas nobly droning over it all. I love capturing these summers on long walks through the forest preserves of Lake County, especially with non-traditional lenses that add an extra texture, softness and distortion to the final image. These lenses help me to visually express the magic I see in this northern Illinois summer world, by making the landscapes and close-up details of a normal summer day into something more.

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July Flame: Capturing Summer in Northern Illinois

My whole life I’ve longed to capture the essence of the world and seasons around me. All of my short film projects incorporate this desire to some extent, and when I can watch one of my projects in the dead of winter and get a faint whiff of the heat of summer baking blacktop, I feel I’ve at least partially succeeded.

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Capturing Photos and Videos with an 11 mm Pinhole Lens

Last year I picked up a Wanderlust Cameras 11mm Pinwide Pinhole lens. Wanderlust no longer makes this “lens” so it’s a bit hard to find, but I managed to snag one on Ebay for a decent price. Unlike a homemade pinhole lens, which I’ve made and used in the past, the Pinwide is precision milled and 3D printed and creates a much cleaner and sharper image. It has a Micro Four Thirds mount, but I’ve mostly used it on my Sony A7S II with an adapter.

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Grayslake Pinhole: Shooting Pinhole Video with a Homemade Body Cap Lens

Pinhole imagery has always fascinated me. I own a Zero Image medium format film pinhole camera that I shoot with occasionally, but other than my weird pumpkin camera obscura, I’ve never tried shooting pinhole photography with a digital camera. I find the precision made digital pinhole lenses that you can buy online just a little too expensive for the results you get, so the other day I finally did the homework and made my own pinhole lens from scratch.

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