Room With A View

Imagine a room.
A dark room.
No lights.
Just a hole in a shade.
The only light source.

What would you see?

This.

And this.

And this.

This too.

One More.

All from this little hole in a shade.

The room functions as a camera obscura. The hole is the size of a quarter. And the scene outside is projected on the walls of the room.

You can see a few physical effects in the images. The inverse square law is nicely illustrated by the last image. Note how the scene nearest the hole is brightest and the drop off in light intensity as the distance increases. And all of the images show how light travels in straight lines, resulting in the inverted images (figuring out why is left as an exercise for the reader). The curious angles, like the bent FedEx truck, are corners where the walls meet, in this case the wall and ceiling.

It was very cool to be "inside" a camera. I should have brought a tripod though. It is tricky to handhold a camera in a dark room like this and get reasonable images. Oh well, I know for next time.

Thanks to Gallery 339 for creating the space as part of their More Photos About Buildings and Food exhibit. And to Patty for "surprising" me.