Some photographers

paint with their cameras … 

… Others just paint them

Weegee & Speed Graflex

The Colorful Camera Series

By Larry Hamill

I began collecting old cameras about ten years ago and starting painting them as decorative objects to place around my studio.  In June 2009, I photographed Jonathan Putnam, an actor with the Columbus based Contemporary American Theatre Company, posed with a silver painted Brownie camera.  I then superimposed him over a 3-D Bryce computer generated image. And thus began the Colorful Camera Series.

 I perused camera stores, flea markets and Goodwill stores for old cameras, painting each with spray paint. Since then, I have asked various members of the community to pose with the  painted cameras – exaggerating the camera in each portrait by using an ultra-wide angle lens. Each subject was then superimposed over an image from my library of manipulated images — a process I call “photilation”.

 Current plans for the Colorful Camera Series include a 2010 calendar and possibly an I-Book, with the hopes of an exhibit of prints to follow.

Far Out Camera

Red Brownie

Banana Colored Camera

Roger Williams

 

 

Arnett Howard & Blue Camera

 

 

 

Colored Pano Camera

 

  

Fluorescent Yellow Camera

Editor’s note:

GUEST CURATOR

Columbus, Ohio, photographer Larry Hamill is guest curator for photography for the  November-December 2009 update of ragazine.cc. Selections of work by his friends and colleagues Kojo Kamau and Chas Ray Krider appear in Photography posts.

 

Hamill is a frequent contributor to ragazine.cc. More of his work and contact information can be found at: www.larryhamill.com and www.larryhamillphotography.wordpress.com