Georgina Maher: Camera Obscura (Photography)(week two)

We completed two tasks in our second two-hour session with Howard, firstly, we were introduced to CAMERA OBSCURAS (latin for Dark Room), and later allowed to look through them individually in order to collect snapshots of that which we saw, which was similar to that produced by modern cameras, only upside down (which was strange but cool at the same time)!

This is a CAMERA OBSCURA:

The obscura projects a real ife image onto a flat surface through a small hole, lense or aperture, however it inverts this image upside down. It can be argued that they will work most effectively in a dark room, suggested by the name it was given following its first usage in 1544 by mathematician Gemma Frius who wanted a better look at the solar eclipse. On the other hand, I disagree! As long as you can create darkness which would surround the area in which the image was to be projected, you can see it just as clearly.

At the beginning of this session we first went into a room, darkened because all light sources including the windows were covered in foil and used solely a lense to look out of a small gap remaining on the window to see a projected image of the road behind the college. We then went back into our room and with camera obscuras similar to that in the diagram we covered the projected image as well as ourselves individually with a black curtain so we were able to seem the image and take a picture of what we saw, just as clearly as we had in the previous room may I add!

After having had the oppotunity to used the CAMERA OBSCURAS, we were supplied with professional photography cameras, and following a short induction on how to set them up, we were instructed, in small groups to venture around the college as well as nearby to collect images inspired by the "Modern World" (although I'm sure there was a couple more but we were alternating between cameras, and bear in mind it was my first attempts):