THE SERIES BEGINS

The idea of doing scenes from famous murders inside of cameras came about after some inspiration from my son. He showed me some scenes taken from unusual angles and that was a springboard for my idea to show what a camera would see.

I started to research famous murders on the internet but first I wanted to do a prototype to explore how this would work out. Plus, at the time I didn't have any cameras to work with. I built a faux box camera and found an advertisement on the internet for a special crime scene camera which showed a scene, how the camera could take measurements and various angles. It was perfect for my experimentation.

I found photos of old Brownie box cameras and used one which I sized to fit the camera I had built. I found some old cameras (not useable for my project) and dis-assembled them, saving whatever parts I could. A lens frame with a flat watch crystal worked for the camera's eye. 

I built a room box from card stock so it would fit inside the camera and proceeded to make the items for the scene. It is quarter inch scale so an O scale train figure could be re-structured for the "body."

This scene is lit solely by LEDs in the table lamps and for the floor lamp I used optic fiber lit with an LED. I think in the future I will use a bit more lighting although you can see the scene fairly well through the camera lens.

I attached a switch to act as the shutter release and quarter size battery holder fits inside quite well. As a prototype it was an excellent learning process as I pretty much figured what I could do and what I needed to change.