Circular 4

As a child, in the mid 1950s, I was given a small camera that took circular photographs instead of rectangular ones. I never saw the photographs. The camera had an unfortunate voyage thru a washing machine with my first roll of film.

In 1965 I joined a school camera club. One of things I wanted to do was experiment with a fisheye lens and make photographs similar to the record cover for “Mr. Tambourine Man by The Byrds” done with a fish eye lens. I liked the extreme wide angle perspective that it created and wondered about how a circle could change the perspective normally seen with a rectangle. Not having access to a fisheye lens I never pursued that project.

In the 1970s doing photography assignments and teaching photography became my full time job. During my off hours I experimented with many different types of photography. One of these pursuits was making circular and vignetted photographs after seeing photographs made in this style by Emmet Gowin.

I make these photographs in two different ways. The first is using a wide angle lens with a lens hood intended for a much longer lens which when looking thru the viewfinder I see the rectangle modified to a vignetted circle within the rectangle. The second way is using an iPhone with the apps Diptic and Krop Circle which gives me a circle within a square. Together they give me a new way to see the world.