The inspiration for this project...

I work in a camera store. Many of our customers believe they need the newest, shiniest, camera equipment to create acceptable images. Some of them simply desire something more up to date than they currently own. Either way, we're happy to accommodate them. Having new, shiny things makes most of us happy. And, with camera equipment, new sensors and lenses often do out-perform older gear.

We also buy and sell pre-owned equipment. Sometimes customers bring in old gear to trade in for new camera gear. Other times they just sell it because it's no longer needed. We have a lot of folks walk in with a box full of old stuff found in a basement or closet. A certain amount of that stuff, due to age or condition, is deemed to be of little to no resale value. Its not uncommon for customers to ask us to dispose of their "junk" rather than carry it back out to their car.

When someone offered me a "broken" Canon 60D I was happy to accept it. To our buyers it was only worth $20 because of broken pop-up flash.  I'd been wanting a camera I could keep in my trunk for those serendipitous photographic opportunities. For a variety of reasons I won't keep a valuable camera in the trunk of my car. This was perfect. Now all I needed was a lens or two.

I rescued an old Canon mount Sigma 70-300 with broken autofocus from our dumpster.  If or when the opportunity arose I figured I could manually focus the lens and now I had a camera in the trunk of my car.

One day I had a bit of time to kill and happened to be near a park with a wooded trail so I grabbed my trunk camera and decided to take a walk. I was actually hoping to see a deer or two but was surprised by this little grasshopper. I was equally surprised by the sharpness and macro capability of my rescued lens.

This image created with that combo of free "junk" made me realize how much discarded equipment can still be used to create great images.


And a few more images created with that camera - lens combo...







What other treasures were ending up in landfills I wondered? ...





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