turn your bedroom into a camera obscura and make photographs with it

UK-based photographer brendan barry has been creating cameras out of literally everything. bread, watermelon, pineapples and even shipping containers (see our coverage here) have been some objects he has transformed into capturing devices. amidst the coronavirus crisis, barry has found himself — like many others — without work and with lots of time on his hands. isolated in his house, this time he has transformed his room into a camera obscura and made a video tutorial for all of us to do the same.

‘I have made a video tutorial of how to turn your bedroom into a camera obscura and your bathroom into a darkroom and then how to make black & white analogue negative & positive prints with them,’ comments brendan barry on his quarantine project. ‘the camera obscura is all made with things people should have lying around the house, I’ve tried to keep it as basic and accessible as possible. the darkroom bit just needs chemicals & paper, but if people don’t have these and they can’t order them online, they can simply use a digital camera instead.’

in the video, barry explains that the first thing you need to do is make your room pitch black. to do so, he used cardboard and gaffer tape but he explains you can also use tinfoil or blackout material. then you have to put a lens in the window — he uses magnifying glasses, camera lenses, eyeglass lenses and even a 3D eyeglass lens. you then cut the cardboard so you can put your lenses in. he clarifies that you don’t need a lens and can just open a hole in the cardboard and create a pinhole camera, the lens serves to clarify the image.

once the lenses are in place, you can start seeing the images by placing a white piece of paper, or whatever white surface, better if translucent, in front of the lenses. here you can decide to use a digital camera and photograph the image or if you want to use real photography paper to later on develop at your homemade laboratory that he also explains how to create.

‘I’m hoping that people stuck at home looking for a project to undertake, students wanting to develop their skills or parents home schooling their kids might take it on and it be of some use,’ brendan barry concludes.