This series focuses on those who take the making of pictures a step or two further, creating their own photographic tools.

Cameron Young, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Cameron Young spent his childhood summers at the lake, exploring underneath the water. As an adult, he wanted to find a way to share the magical images from his memories of dreamy light through murky waters. Well-versed in lens-less photography, Young made numerous unsuccessful attempts at creating a submergible pinhole camera before his eureka moment. While working in his darkroom, handling the wet chemistry and running water over his film, Young realized that the answer had been in his hands all along.

Using a stainless-steel film developing tank, Young drilled a hole in its side and inserted a brass shim stock with a pinhole. The tank’s cylindrical shape creates a curved film plane and a .41mm pinhole diameter provides an aperture of f209. Young loads 4 ¼ x 3 ¼ paper negatives into the camera before taking it out in the field. Filling the camera with water through the light baffle, he submerges it in shallow waters no deeper than three feet, opens the electrical tape shutter, and exposes between two and ten minutes. For particularly long exposures, or if he is photographing in moving water, Young attaches a plate weight for stability. Because the camera itself is made from a developing tank, he initially intended to develop negatives in the camera itself but found the chemicals eroded the pinhole lens. Instead, he brings the camera back to his studio to develop the negatives.

The resulting photographs are dreamy, yet surprisingly sharp, black-and-white images of a world both strange and familiar. At shallow depths, the rocks, leaves, branches underneath the water are illuminated with soft, filtered light. Resting on the bottom of the lake, this vantage point combined with the pinhole’s distortion, evokes memories of opening one’s eyes underwater and seeing the world in a new way.

View more of Young’s work on his website.

Have you made or modified your own photographic equipment? Let us know at info@donttakepictures.com