By William Coleman
Ever since the dawn of the caravan people have been looking at inventive ways to adapt their leisure homes to a higher standard. Over the years we have seen convert concepts just for fun and some purpose built for business like pizza vans and various festival vendor builds. One creative individual has designed a fully functioning camera using a caravan.
In what started as a giant static camera eventually evolved into the caravan camera pictured in this article. Brendan Barry, who provided these photos via his Facebook, initially wanted to have a giant dark room/camera combination. After some attempts that didn’t go quite the way he wanted he decided to invest in a caravan and the idea snapped into place from there.
One of the early attempts at building his own dark room started with plywood and some black out materials from a fabric shop: ‘I borrowed a 20′ military aerial lens off a friend and took it on the road to Latvia in my camper-van,’ he explains.
‘The problem with it was that I only made one dark slide, and this wasn’t exactly light tight!”
After that attempt Brendan took things a step further and travelled to Latvia for the next stage of his experiment. The basement of a Latvian castle became the new lab due to the darkness that a basement provides: “I could load in the dark, fire flashes to expose and, as I was shooting paper negatives and direct positives, I could develop the print there and then.”
Now that the science behind the idea had been established a casing for the camera was still needed. So Brendan built his new camera inside of a shed. “The [initial] camera itself was rather awkward to use, so when I returned to England I decided it would be easier to build something bigger that I could climb inside and operate from within, so the ‘Shed Cam’ was born.” The only real issue Brendan faced was that the shed was not the most portable of ideas. Once the photo was taken he would then have to transport the photo in a light proof bag to another location to then develop the image.
Then the snappy idea of using a caravan came into play. Brendan took to eBay in search of an affordable caravan that would be suitable for a full conversion. £150 later and the caravan concept was a go. ‘This worked a treat, I could shoot in the shed, put the paper in a light-proof bag and take it to the darkroom at the other end of my studio. The only problem then was, I was stuck inside and confined to the studio (although the camera shed was on wheels, it wouldn’t fit out the door even if I wanted to take it outside!” And just like that the Caravan Cam was born. Not only is the caravan suitable for the camera but the much needed dark room was able to be built inside too. Meaning that the caravan is an all in one camera and development studio.
With such a great idea now becoming a reality it is a winning achievement with wide appeal. Brendan took his newly built Camera Van on tour to and tooks portraits of over 300 people across a long weekend.
This is an idea I really love. I try to take as many pictures when travelling as possible. It’s the best way to capture your surroundings and store great memories. So the combination of the two should go a long way.
