CAMERA OBSCURA

My aunt, Jessica Wynne, who is a professional photographer and I created a Camera Obscura in my bedroom this summer on Cape Cod.

To create a camera obscura we completely darkened a room with one small hole to let light in. When it’s bright outside, light enters through the hole and projects an upside down image of the outside world onto the wall opposite the hole. The camera obscura, is Latin for "dark chamber.” Like a modern camera, it demonstrates how light travels in straight lines, how aperture affects clarity, and how an image forms when light is focused onto a surface; principles at the heart of taking photographs. Many artists such as Leonardo da Vinci used this technique. He suggested that the human eye is like a camera obscura. He went on to publish the first clear description of the camera obscura in Codex Atlanticus (1502).