History of Pinhole Photography -- Claire Odorico

Images created via a small opening will be found in the natural environment and in everyday life, and people in various parts of the world have been observing them since ancient times. Probably the earliest surviving description of this kind of observation dates from the 5th century BC, written by Chinese philosopher Mo Ti. In the Western hemisphere, Aristotle in 4 BC was asking, without receiving any satisfactory answer, why sunlight passing through quadrilaterals, for example, one of the holes in wickerwork, does not create an angled image, but a round one instead, and why the image of the solar eclipse passing through a sieve, the leaves of a tree or the gaps between crossed fingers creates a crescent on the ground. In 10 AD the Arabian physicist and mathematician Ibn al-Haitham, known as Alhazen, studied the reverse image formed by a tiny hole and indicated the rectilinear propagation of light. There was another scholar during the Middle Ages who was familiar with the principle of the camera obscura, namely the English monk, philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon. It was not until the manuscript Codex atlanticus (c. 1485) that the first detailed description of the pinhole camera was set down by Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci, who used it to study perspective. http://www.pinhole.cz/en/pinholecameras/whatis.html

I took this picture of a dragon fruit on my trip to Thailand this past summer (August 2013). Although this picture was taken on an iphone, I really like the way it turned out. It captures the variety of different colors and textures in Thai cuisine which are very representative of the fun and vibrant Thai culture.