I went to look inside the camera obscura with a friend. The place was really puzzling at first. I looked and saw two sets of pictures as if they were trying to merge in ambiguity. Then I realized that there are two holes in the either adjacent sides. I covered one of the holes and then the picture was clear. Then I tried closing the other one. It was two different scenes. I did not like the blurriness of two sets of pictures and that’s why I kept one of the holes covered. I sat down to stop the blockage of light coming in through the little hole.
When my friend entered the obscura, the first thing she told was, “Oh my GOD! It feels like we are in a very dark room. ” And indeed that is exactly what a camera obscura is – “a dark room. ” I glanced on the view for some minutes and started analyzing it. The view was in reverse like upside down and it was also laterally inverted. I took my pencil and my sketch pad out and started drawing. Being an arts student, I took precise measurements of where the shadows were placed. I felt like I was drawing from a painting. I could see the perfect perspective with every detail and color possible.
I started drawing from the right edge and when I finished the left edge, I noticed something different about the image on the wall. I could not actually figure out what it was for a little while. Even the already dark room felt like it went darker. Then I found out that the shadows had shifted because, obviously, the position of the sun was different and that affected the shadows. The amount of light reflected through the objects passed through the hole and the intensity of the reflected light affected the brightness of the image.
It was still so fascinating to think about how people might have felt when they saw that this little box could fit an entire place inside itself, just by means of passing lights though a hole that is so much smaller than a human palm. As I was spending time inside that room, I saw many people passing around, up and down. I felt like I was spying through a CCTV camera. Instead of looking outside a hole, there was this giant image cast right in front of me. But the thing was that, the image was upside down.
I was very confused on how was it really being reflected and what I should do to the image to transform it into how would it look if I was right in front of the original view. I looked through my drawing, turned it upside down, looked at its reflection and looked through the back side of it. Then I realized that the image produced was like the upside down inverted version of the real view. It was laterally placed in right position. It was not like mirror image. Spending forty minutes inside the camera obscura helped me understand more about photography and I got a clear picture and understanding of the information I already had.
