This project will evolve over time, so I start this journal with my story. How cameras, furniture, and image-making led to this scrapbook in 2025.
CAMERAS TO FURNITURE AND BACK TO CAMERAS
I'm Dominic, originally from the UK, currently based in Japan. I've spent most of my career as a woodworker: making custom furniture, bespoke kitchens and timber framed structures. Camera making came first though - in college I made basic card and plywood cameras. After college I trained as a furniture maker, learning skills perfect for wooden camera designs.
For many years furniture was the work, cameras my hobby. Over time I blended the two - pinhole cameras, wooden film holders, large format cameras.
Around the mid 2000's I started sharing camera builds online and found others who liked primitive camera tech too. Questions led to conversations, conversations to friends.
A few months in, someone asked if I'd make them a 4x5 pinhole camera. Scary! When I explained my cameras were hobby experiments, they still wanted one. What a leap of faith! I made it, sent it off—no issues. Over the next few years similar projects started to come.
This led to making experimental lenses. A friend jokingly called me a 'lens punk' after seeing my expensive rangefinder with a DIY lens. The name stuck—becoming the spirit of everything I now make.
THE LENS PUNK PHILOSOPHY
Lens Punk is about making with intention while embracing experimentation. It's a mindset that respects the fundamentals—understanding the core concepts of craft and image-making—while leaving space for creative exploration.
It's DIY but not careless. It honors knowledge and traditions of the past while allowing room to play, building tools that serve the work rather than following trends.
This approach extends beyond camera making to all creative work: learn the foundations, then experiment freely within and beyond them.
THIS JOURNAL
For years my time has been split between the woodshop—making furniture, building cameras and lenses, and more recently running photography workshops and experience days. My own image making has taken a back seat. I hope this project allows space to return to my image craft too.
This journal section is a place for sharing my making process—camera building, photography, and thoughts on art and life as they evolve. As an introvert, I'm learning to balance solitary craft work with community expression—blending time alone in the workshop with sharing and building alongside others.
Future entries will dive into thoughts, projects and ideas. This entry aims to be a foundation—sharing who I am, where I came from, and why I'm doing this.
The goal is simple: keep making, keep sharing. Let's build something beautiful.
Lens Punk (aka Dominic)
