Johnny Tang Photo

This is how I turned my bedroom into a camera, and this is how you can do it too. Anything can be a camera, if the box is dark enough and you poke a hole in it. An upside down image of whatever’s outside that hole gets projected all over the inside. So depending on your view, cars will drive around your room upside down, and birds will fly under your feet.

This is just one of those miracles of the universe that light behaves this way.

Now you can scale the box as big or as small as you want. It works the same when it’s the size of your phone, as it does the size of your house. The difference being one is easier to carry, and the other you can walk into.

This is what we in the industry call a pinhole, or if you want to be fancy about it, a Camera Obscura.

Now this is cool, but how can we improve it?

Well you know those product pictures with an infinite white background like on amazon? This is done with a piece of paper with a curve at the bottom. That curve is there to get rid of the horizon line. So it’s hard to tell where the paper meets the floor. Normally it’s white, because we overexpose it with white light.

But it’s a white paper, so it’ll be whatever color you shine on it.

Now if take that white paper and put it in a Camera Obscura, suddenly it creates a flipped horizon that you can walk on.

Allowing you to walk on clouds.

This is what I’m raising money for, details in the link in my bio.

This style of work takes more resources than the kind of work I typically make, as well as a bit of luck and timing. So I’m having a fundraiser so I can make more Camera Obscura portraits.

Donors get first look privileges, meaning they’ll see the work before I release to the public. If we meet the goal, donors will also get an option to buy a special edition print from the finished body of work at cost.

Are we taking pictures? Or are we making art?

See the link in bio for more details.