Camera Obscura Alternate Assignment

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      Our process in creating the camera obscura began with covering the floor to ceiling in trash bags. We ended up having to do two layers to make it more opaque, as well as having to cover one of the ceiling lights that couldn't be turned off. Despite the lack of air conditioning in our work area, we managed to create a space with as few light leaks as we could manage.



       Once everything was covered, we cut a hole in the bags at the center of the window a few inches across and were a bit shocked when it actually worked and we saw the cityscape sprawled across the wall in front of us. All of the colors on the wall, the darkness of the room, and seeing boats float across the river upside down in real time made it feel almost dream-like. It really felt like we had stepped into a moving picture, and essentially we had.


        We played around with being in front of the image to create differing visuals when taking pictures of our set up. There's just something pretty special about being able to interact with art.


       As we got more curious we even cut multiple holes in the covering on the window and found that it overlapped the image from a slightly different angle. We created different sized lenses, and saw that the bigger we made them, the more the image would go out of focus. 
        I don't think I've ever been so in awe of a scientific aspect of the universe that is always there for us to take advantage of and yet we don't realize it. We don't think about how incredible something as seemingly simple as light is. As we stood inside the camera obscura, I couldn't help but feel that there is wonder and magic in everything, sometimes you just have to know where to look.

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