Camera Obscura Adventure

The principles behind camera obscura are surprisingly simple, but still manage to amaze viewers. The experience of seeing an image take shape in a pitch black room right before one's eyes is actually quite stunning. The light, coming from the outdoors, passes into the dark room through a minuscule hole and creates an upside-down image on the wall. It takes a few minutes for the human eye to see this, but after about five minutes, details of the outside world begin to appear. Since the image is upside-down and monochromatic, the experience is very trippy and surreal. One can feel their pupils and retina working to perceive the image, and this is almost psychedelic in nature. It is refreshingly to know that a simple ray of light shone through a mere pinhole can cause such an interesting phenomenon. Literally and figuratively, camera obscura is an eye-opening experience.

Sunlight from the outdoors isn't the only way to witness camera obscura. Well-illuminated indoor objects can have the same effect. For example, a still-life setup looks very dramatic when viewed in a camera obscura booth. At first, not all details are apparent. Vague shapes take form first. The most recognizable object was a model of a human hand. Next to it, there appeared to be several blobs taking shape. From what I perceived, two shapes were rectangular, one was globular, and the last was bottle-shaped. After leaving the booth and viewing the still-life, I realized that there were more shapes that my eyes hadn't detected. One was a cylinder, which I had mistaken for a rectangle, and another was a small sphere resting beside the hand. Had I stayed in the booth longer, these shapes probably would have become more apparent. For the most part, I managed to make out many of the major shapes.