Photographer Kyle Roper is no stranger to unique camera creations; he was the producer for the viral Skyscraper Camera Project. But his latest project is a bit smaller and more intimate. Amid the pandemic, he turned his front door into a camera to capture beautiful large-format black-and-white portraits of his neighbors.
The so-called Door Frame project was inspired—as so many things are these days—by lockdown. Having worked with makeshift camera master Brendan Barry, and a student of old time portrait masters like Dorothea Lange, Roper decided to turn his front door into a large format camera for shooting COVID-safe portraits that would capture the ethos of this moment in history.
The resulting setup looks a bit strange, but it allows him to conduct photo shoots from the other side of the door through a speakerphone.
Photo by TJ Martin, used with permission.
We caught up with Roper briefly over email, where he shared a few additional details about how the project came to be and the trial & error that was involved in the first iterations of the Door Frame camera.
“The camera was designed in this rudimentary fashion because I worked with supplies I could get my hands on during the lockdown. That and I didn’t know what I was doing, plan ahead or bother making schematics, etc,” Roper tells PetaPixel. “It was a lot of trial and error. Additionally I didn’t want to blackout all 13 windows in my tiny LA Bungalow— I like sunlight too much.”
You can see a few pictures of his “early prototypes” of the lens/lens box system using an old V-Mount Hasselblad lenses that he thought could work:
After some tweaking, the final variant features a NIKKOR-W 300mm f/5.6 lens mounted in a Copal Shutter. The setup looks… pretty comical… from the other side of the door:
Using it is an adventure in and of itself.
“When photographing subjects I operate the camera from inside of it. Hanging the photographic paper on the image box (which has a dry erase board affixed to it) using magnets,” explains Roper. “I usually operate wide open (f/5.6-f/8) due to the speed of the photographic paper (ISO 3 or 6). All effects are achieved within the camera.”
After the images are captured he develops them in his bathroom—which he’s turned into a makeshift darkroom—and then dries the final frames on … whatever he can find (see the final GIF image below):
Images are captured on one of three mediums: Ilford RC IV Multigrade Photo Paper (8×10, 5×7), Ilford Direct Positive Paper (8×10, 5×7, 4×5), or Ilford Ortho 80 Plus (4×5, 8×10) film. No matter how he captures them, the results absolutely speak for themselves.
As Roper explains, slowing down and rediscovering the “old ways” can yield wonderful results.
Scroll down to see a selection of the portraits he’s captured in this way. If you look closely, you may even notice a few Emmy and Academy Award winners interspersed among his subjects…
To see more of Roper’s work, head over to his website or give him a follow on Instagram. There are a lot more Door Frame portraits there for you to peruse to your heart’s content.
(H/T Brendan Barry)
Image credits: All photos (unless otherwise captioned) by Kyle Roper and used with permission.
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