The Camera Obscura Apartment Project

The rain this past weekend created a little break in the normally high paced summer photo action, so I decided to have a little creative fun by making my apartment into a camera obscura. Essentially, I made our apartment into a giant camera by covering all of the windows with doubled up black garbage bags and tape. Once the room was light tight, I cut out a small hole from a piece of cardboard and fitted it into one of the obstructed windows so that the outside light could come in.

The final aperture hole ended up being about a third of the size of my first attempt (shown above). The smaller hole sharpened up the field of focus to near perfect, but doubled my exposure time to 45-60 seconds.

Keeping a pose for this long is tricky business. You can't smile because there are too many little muscles at work to keep stationary, and keeping your eyes focused on one spot in a dark room is nearly impossible. If you do it right, you look just slightly possessed instead of totally insane. Matt and Meg (first photo) did an excellent job. Trevor and I posed for a few as well, but our faces are leaning more toward the totally insane side, so I left those guys out!

Being inside of a nearly black room with a faint glow of the outside world projected over you and the pitter-patter of rain was an extremely tranquil experience. It was like being in a strange underwater dream where the senses are muffled but amazed. Even after reading and learning how the light bends and flips through the hole and into the room, you still feel like there is more magic at work than science.


Great project, highly recommended for children and adults interested in photography!