CLAUDIA SAW: Camera Obscura

Today in Seminar 1, we got talking about how through every age artists have uses technology or optical devices to improve their images. In David Hockney's investigative book "Secret Knowledge", we learn that important artists began using optical devices as aids for creating their work early in the Renaissance, approximately 175 years before the time of Galileo.

All that talk about the camera obscura reminded me of some stunning images that I saw in a magazine a few years ago. I thought I'd have a go at re-finding them and I'm so glad I tried - see them below. They're undoubtedly gorgeous.

Taken by Abelardo Morell, these photographs are not tampered with via Photoshop!
No, not Mother Nature but Uncle Optics has aided the outcome of these images.
Morell travels the world and converts rooms into camera obscura devices.
By poking a tiny pin-hole in a a black out curtain the outside is naturally supimposed upon the room upside down. He captures the scene on a very slow shutter speed as the room is only 'lit' by what light enters through the pin-hole.