Well that was fun! The conversion of the Fine Art dept. Case Space into a camera obscura in finally happened in the last week of April 2014. Despite being at a less than ideal time of year (the start of Term 3 when students and staff were all busy with hand-ins and degree show preparation) a large number of people experienced the project, much publicity spreading by word of mouth. A couple of unit leaders on Film as well as Photo and Arts & Media made announcements in lectures that this was not to be missed! - Many thanks to those people for spreading the enthusiasm.
I’ve never seen so many students getting so excited by a workshop event as this. People left inspired and calling friends to share the experience. Thanks to Paul Vivian for finding the slot, giving us as much time as possible in a busy schedule but four days wasn’t really long enough! Hopefully we'll be back, for a longer time and even with a portable version? - watch this space...
If you missed it:
Here is the image of the courtyard as projected on the back wall of the room. The room is about 2.4 metres high:
if you get a stiff neck trying to turn your head around (we large format photographers can see upside down of course) here it is inverted: This gives a reasonable impression of the quality of the image. The image circle is so vast that a lot of light hit the walls, ceiling and floor, washing out the colour and contrast. We couldn't alter the white walls but black would have been much better. Instead we did what we could by building a fairly crude internal lens hood/snoot from card which cut a lot of the stray light. The lens is a 102 inch (8 feet 6 inches) / 2600mm focal length so infinity focus would be some way in front of the wall. As it was, the length of the box being about 11 feet meant that the point of focus was around 40 feet or 12 metres in front of the box. As this is about the distance to the middle of the courtyard it was ideal. People sitting on the coloured metal chairs were crisply rendered, while the tree trunk and the sky were either side of the point of focus and softer.
Reactions were terrific. - we should have kept a visitor's book for the comments. In an age of instant digital imaging, giant screens and saturated high definition colour, people were still amazed and delighted by a simple optical effect. One person commented that the colours looked "like film",while another asked if the image was "live" - They may sound daft but if you experience the image it kind of makes sense; You know what you are looking at is real but we are unused to seeing it unmediated by technology.
Sadly, schedules meant that there was no chance to make the planned Harman Direct Positive prints as the darkroom is unavailable while the shows are on, but Tracey managed a couple of successful experiments with pre-prepared cyanotype paper. Hopefully this was just an initial test and next time we'll make it bigger and better.
VIDEO OF THE CAMERA OBSCURA IN ACTION:
This is in rather wobbly iPhone-vision (I'm really not a film maker as you will see!) but it does give an idea of the experience:
Visit from a local celebrity.
I was delighted to meet up with Moira Blackwell on Tuesday. Moira is a graduate of the UCA BA Photo course and an active and successful photographer with many published art projects to her name. She is also co-author of the Binky Bear books: photographic children's stories published and sold worldwide. See http://binkybear.co.uk/about-us/. Moira (and Binky) just happened to be visiting UCA and as a friend of bears I was happy to meet him and help Moira make some photographs inside and outside the camera obscura.
Thanks again to everyone who helped with this project and who came and experienced the finished camera obscura. The enthusiasm and excitement generated was infectious and the whole experience was uplifting. May we never lose that sense of wonder...
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