So we’ve sifted through the collective search engine results and here’s what we’ve found.

The website for the Portuguese Torre de Tavira is down currently but the Tripadvisor reviews imply it’s still open and has some really nice photos of the structure (no credits given)

There’s also this great shot of the “how it works” sign on the outside.

And, of course, the inside itself.

There’s also a review on the (wonderfully named) British Water Tower Appreciation Society blog from 2008 which tells us the tower was built in 1931 and converted in 2004 by English astronomers Clive and Gloria Jackson.

Looking over the tower from a construction viewpoint, it seems to be typical of the Mouchel pattern with an Intze floor. There are many water towers in the Algarve region. Like the famous variety of Algarve chimneys, some have Moorish influences in their detailing but most of the larger municipal towers such as at Portimao are fairly basic as they were built during the economic hardships of the Salazar era.

The lens/mirror/dish mechanism seems pretty standard but the space looks incredible – a massive circular room high about the town. Makes us wish Birmingham had a history of water towers…

The Cadiz Torre Tavira does have an active website and appears to be a much slicker operation, tied into the tourist offer of the town. Here’s a short promotional video:

The structure is a watchtower so already gives stunning views across the old town and the bay. The camera is just part of the appeal.

Inside is another traditional setup with the concave dish projected onto from above. Here’s a promo shot of people looking at it.

And, quite delightfully, a photo of the dish with the lights on!

The mirror/lens housing is most impressive. At first glance I thought it was a small chimney, until I saw the people next to it. Wow!

So there you have it – two camera obscuras, one in a watertower, one in a watchtower, both named Tavira.

Lovely!

The Photographers’ Gallery in London has a camera obscura and it's a little different from the norm.

Here's their video (taken from this page) explaining how it works and also giving a good historical background.

(I didn't get any decent photos so these gifs are all taken from that video.)

It's interesting to note that even though I watched this before visiting I didn't quite understand what they have there until I visited it myself. But maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

It’s an intriguing set-up that’s different from anything else I’d seen. For a start the lens is embedded in a window and the mirror rotates around a vertical axis. Most cameras, ours included, have the lens in the roof and the mirror moving on the horizontal, but there’s no reason it can’t be done this or any other way.

This sideways look also solves the problem of being on in London building with a view of the brickwork opposite. The mirror allows you to look along the street and see people walking towards the gallery and really does mess with your perceptions.

The other difference is the chamber itself which I was surprised to see is a standard function room of a substantial size. When I first went in I thought the camera would be one of the cupboards but it’s the whole room.

Blackout binds are lowered and the lens projects on to a free-standing screen on wheels which can be moved to focus the image. This was an innovation I hadn’t seen before, solving the problem of integrating a focus mechanism into the lens housing. To focus you simply move the screen, which is also semi-opaque so you can see the image on both sides.

The size and format of the room means you can have a large number of people looking at the camera, which does lessen the intimacy a bit, but also opens it up to new possibilities. This is not a recreation of a Victorian gentleman’s folly, nor an Englightenment drawing tool. This is figuring out what a camera obscura is today. 

And ultimately, it’s just a hole in the wall. Always born of simplicity, these things.

Thanks loads to Vikki Jessop for arranging an out of hours look at the camera!

In July I was lucky enough to go to the Isles of Scilly, something I can highly recommend, and was delighted to hear they had a camera obscura on the main island of St Mary’s. It’s currently not listed on maps but you’ll find it at these co-ordinates. From the south beach at Hugh Town, look for this sign.

Walk along the path up the hill until you see a tower with a familiar looking protrusion.

If the lens is up and the bunting is out then you know the obscura is open for business!

Thanks in part to the wonderful light you get on the Scillys, the projected image is quite beautiful even with light-leaks from the windows, necessarily open given the heatwave we were enjoying.

The lens and mirror assembly is mounted in a collapsable tower, giving a wide view of nearly the whole island, which makes for a great orientation for new visitors. This is lead by Andrew, the camera operator, who has lived on the island long enough to know all the stories.

This tower system does, unfortunately, mean the camera doesn’t operate in high winds, but we didn’t have that problem when we were there.

The camera is a new venture on the island this year, and did reportedly have some residents concerned. A section of the 360 view is blocked off because it would give too good a view into people’s windows and gardens, something we hadn’t really considered before.

An interesting side to the camera is that Andrew does not have a background in cameras or optics. He took on the project to restore the tower itself and the obscura was a byproduct of wondering what to do with it. It is lovely to see old structures like this being given a new lease of life and I really hope the camera develops into a long term attraction.

One small criticism I did have was the screen used wasn’t really that suitable. Andrew had gone for a standard silver projection screen designed to be looked at from a distance. These have artefacts which enhance distance viewing but are distracting close-up, rather like an old CRT TV. I would have used a plain sheet of white card which would have given a clearer, brighter image.

The screen was also flat, meaning details on the edges were out of focus and required manual use of a card to see them. Again, not a major problem and one which can easily be solved in the future, bringing it up to the professional level of the lens mechanism.

I was deeply impressed when I heard Andrew and his partner Be had only been running the camera for a few scant months. It feels like a mature, oiled operation while still retaining the eccentric, off-kilter air you’d expect from the camera obscura. On the way up the stairs is their Cabinet of Curiosities which people are invited to contribute to. While we were there someone was delivering a carefully melted-flat Barbie doll. Lovely!

They also have the best/worst website I’ve seen for a camera obscura so far.

It was designed and built in 2005 by SHoP Architects and has a lovely modern swoop to it, updating the traditional round tower and fitting in nicely with the harbourside environs.

Not sure what’s up with those glowing slits in the wall though…

There’s a nice report on the Magic Mirror site from 2007 which has some good nerdy photos of the apparatus. Interesting to note they solved the focussing issue by having the table itself go up and down.

According to this tourism site the camera is still functioning a decade later though by appointment only. It’s weathered nicely too.

Talk to people about the Camera Obscura, as we do all the time these days, and chances are they’ll mention the theory that Renaissance painters such as Caravaggio used such things to bring realism to their work, so we thought it worth featuring on the blog.

When David Hockney publicised this theory in 2001 it was pretty revolutionary but today it seems fairly obvious. Artists always use the tools available to them to do better work and optics were dramatically improving at that time. That painters would use a camera obscura to achieve things the naked eye was incapable is a no-brainer.

The theory was first brought to the public consciousness in a BBC documentary, Secret Knowledge, which is on YouTube in two parts (one, two) albeit in pretty low quality. There’s no commercial DVD release available but there is a reasonably good quality copy on the BitTorrent sites if you know where to look.

The thesis is fairly simple. Painters were trying to replicate three dimensional reality on a two dimensional surface. They noticed the effect of the camera obscura was achieving this and so set them up in their studios so they might trace their models and get the perspectives and proportions right, not to mention previously impossible things like naturally falling cloth and fixed-point reflections.

From our perspective, the studio Hockney builds to demonstrate this, with lenses, mirrors and curtains, is fascinating and opens up some new directions we could take our project. There’s one scene, for example, where he sets up an actor dressed as Bacchus in a Caravaggio painting.

He then moves behind the curtain, literally into the camera obscura (Latin: “darkened room“), where the image of the actor is focussed onto his canvas, and starts to sketch his outline.

So far it’s just a projection, but then he asks the actor to move and it suddenly gets uncanny. It’s amazing how many people are amazed that the image inside the camera obscura moves. Even when you rationally know that it’s just light from outside it still seems weird to see this flat image behaving realistically. Hockney directing this upside-down ghost has the same effect.

The inside/outside dynamic of Hockney’s setup brought to mind a theatre piece by local geniuses Stan’s Cafe titled The Cleansing of Constance Brown where the set is a long corridor into which actors and props emerge through many doors. There’s a heightened sense of a world behind those doors which we cannot see but which intrudes into our limited view. Here’s some clips:

I started thinking about the camera obscura’s potential as a theatrical stage, of sorts. The audience sits in a darkened space looking at screens onto which the live actors are projected and reflected from unseen bright chambers in the wings. By having multiple lenses and mirrors which can be moved during the show the effect could be really interesting. I wonder if this has been tried before, or if there’s an experimental theatre company or festival in the region interested in trying this out? James? Laura/Harun?

And that was just one idea. The documentary is well worth an hour of your time and the book is published by Thames and Hudson (ours is on order – a review may follow if it warrants it.)

This beauty was built by Aaron Chetwynd Architects as part of the Ingestre Follies heritage trail at Ingestre Hall near Stafford. The architect's photos are from 2010 and it popped up in my Instagram feed today so it's definitely still there.

While this is a permanent structure we really like the simplicity of the pyramid design. It's something we've been thinking of for when we do our temporary Oscura Sheds in 2017

All photos from the Architect.

The Hut of the Shadows is a nice one to start with because it's not in the traditional style. If anything it's in the prehistoric style and looks like a sacred pagan site.

It's located on the Isle Of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, so not one to pop over to for a day trip but we do hope to get to it one day. It was built in 1997 by artist Chris Drury and projects an image of Loch nam Madadh onto a large stone.

Here's a walking guide.

Here's a nice pic of it in context:

Chris Dury is a really interesting artist who has done a lot of work around the principles of the Camera Obscura. He calls these structures "Cloud Chambers" and has built quite a few of them around the country. He says:

The interiors are dark, the entrance being from a door or curved passageway, the floor or viewing surface is white, and there is a small aperture or lens in the ceiling or wall. Images of clouds, branches, waves, landscape, are thus projected inside.

A large preoccupation in my work has been the exploration of what inner and outer nature mean. These cloud chambers are still, silent, meditative and mysterious spaces. Outside, they are discreet objects which sit unobtrusively within the landscape; are in fact made of the material of the landscape. They are often built partially underground, so that in these dark spaces what is outside is brought in and reversed. Clouds drift silently across the floor.

Here's the 6m diameter Cloud Chamber at the Eden Project:

Before we installed the mirror on the Portable Camera Obscura it was effectively a cloud chamber. Watching the clouds drift by and the occasional bird dart overhead was a beautiful thing and it's definitely an experience we hope to explore in the future in our own ways.

Finally, while browsing Chris' site we found this wonderful proposal for a camera obscura in an abandoned boat on the coast of Sweden titled Sea Change.

Beautiful!