Cary Norton: Builder of Yesterday

Birmingham, Ala.-based photographer Cary Norton is a visionary. He has taken advantage of fanatical devotion to Legos and photography, to build a camera few would have thought possible: a LEGO camera. Before I continue, let me share with you an image of this beauty, posted on Cary’s blog:

Just as impressive is Cary’s documentation of his process. You can see several pictures of the different stages on his blog, and he explains his approach:

I started with trying to use the LEGO builder App on the computer to spec it out before I built it, but my mind wouldn’t work like that, so I borrowed a metric tonne of LEGOs from my friend Gregory. I made a couple of rounds of prototypes that proved to work well enough for my mind to think Hello World / proof of concept. Fast forward a bit and I got really busy and left the project sitting on a desk for just ages. A big hitch in the progress, other than being busy, was that I’d built just enough of the camera to realize I had to rebuild the main body to accommodate the film holder—a part I’d forgotten to plan for.

Fast forward something like a year, and I finally carved out time to restructure everything to fit the back and actually finish the super-low-budget “ground glass”. This weekend marked the first time all the pieces came together! I took 4 frames on Sunday, two Monday, and processed them later that day. I got to scan them this morning and I am COMPLETELY FREAKING STOKED.

So are we, Cary, So are we. Here are some examples of the pictures taken with the camera, which Cary dubs the Legotron:

This camera is a Mark I. But Cary has his sights set on a more advanced project.

I have plans for the next version already. I have a lot more knowledge now and can probably design more accurately in the LEGO App. I’m also going to do a lot of measuring to make sure I have a better focus range (on this version, I just started building on a whim). I’m sure lots of other little tweaks will find their way into the Mark II, but for now, I’ve got to shoot this guy as much as I can! I’m working on a cohesive project theme to shoot around. I’m open to suggestions too.

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