Can making my own camera lens respark my creativity?

I have had a creativity block for a long time. It didn't matter what I seemed to be doing, nothing was turning out like I hoped, and there was nothing I was hoping to turn out. This is not a new thing for me because this has happened from time to time throughout my life. However this one was longer than what I can remember. I would throw together random videos with random songs post them on youtube, shoot random photos of random things and post them on this blog and nothing would satisfy me. The fact that there is absolutely no traffic on this blog does not help things either. Even thought I would remind myself that this blog is for me and not you, it still bothers me.

So to get out of this funk I have been reading a lot of blogs and looking at things on the internet. One site I ran across was a do it yourself website dedicated to photographers creating things for their craft. The things on there are from basic fixes to complete construction of some complicated things. The one thing that caught my attention was the construction of a custom lens. I had two broken lenses laying around and started thinking I could build a lens from the camera mount plate on them. I also had two broken enlarger lenses for parts to add to the pile and options available to me. Constructing a lens is rather basic, but it can get as intense as you want it too at the same time. I like to keep things basic as I am not a scientist or an engineer.

While trying to figure out the design I was testing in video mode and hand holding things.

Here is a link to that video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wMZiC5Z3Ls

After coming up with a solid design held together by black photo tape I took a photograph of Super Mario. To shoot this photo I used direct sunlight outside on my patio. The Super Mario is about an inch tall and is on my key chain.

Here is the first photo


After deciding I was happy with the design, I then started the gluing and solidifying process. This took all of one evening.
The next day at work I shot a couple of test shots of flowers. The first shot is of a yellow carnation, and the second is of a some random purple flower off some plant in the studio greenhouse.

Here is the carnation.


Here is the same image in black and white. If you frequent this blog, you know how much I love black and white.


Here is the random purple flower.


Finally if you are wondering what this contraption looks like I have included a photo for you. I am proud of how it looks, it looks pretty legit and honestly I kind of impressed myself here. Included in this photo are the two flowers pictured above.



Thank you to Travis and Lucein for sending me the 35mm film camera with broken lens about two years ago. That lens is the lens mount on this, so without it I do not know how this could have come together.

Thank you for looking, and leave comments if you want too. If you are unable to leave comments because you do not have a sign in, send me an email to foveaphotography@gmail.com and let me know. I can reset the setting on the blog to allow anyone to leave comments. I do not know if it is set up like that right now so until I get an email from someone I will never know if it is.

Have a wonderful day/evening/night/morning or what ever.

Tyler