Camera Obscura - Anna Heinrich & Leon Palmer

Internationally famous installation artists Anna Heinrich & Leon Palmer are the clever folk behind this lovely shedlike camera obscura which they built at Rufford Abbey Country Park in Nottinghamshire this summer. Here they explain the whys and wherefores:

"The Rufford Abbey camera obscura is like a giant camera which has a very large lens as its window. Light from the scene outside travels through the lens and is focused onto a screen formed by the back wall of the Camera Obscura. The result is a huge inverted panoramic image of the park which has a very quiet and ethereal quality where time almost seems to slow down. "The Camera Obscura is open to the public and is unsupervised so has been designed so anyone can go in and operate it. The door has sprung hinges so it closes on its own to reduce excessive light leakage from outside. Once inside the room it only takes a little time for your eyes to adjust as the lens is very large (at 250mm diameter it also acts as a small window) and produces a very bright image. The image has a central area of sharp focus that can be moved across the inverted panorama by pulling down on one side or the other of a steel rope that hangs beneath the lens window causing the lens to pivot along its vertical axis."The footprint of the building is an oval shape about 4m wide by 3m based on two radii relating to the focal length of the lens. The screen inside is 2.4m high. The Camera Obscura is clad inside and out with western red cedar while the entrance area is oak board. Inside a bench follows the curve the front wall so people can sit and watch the world go by in beautiful dreamy, upside-down cameraobscurascope. It is a wonderful space to be in, the colours are stunning and the smell of cedar fantastic."

Anna and Leon are keen to make more Cameras Obcurae (and other similar shedlike structures) so if anyone would like to commission one you can email them by
clicking here.Tomorrow, I hope to bring you some photos of the construction process of the camera obscura.

Willett and Patteson's Amazing Camera Obscura

Willett and Patteson's Amazing Camera Obscura is a welcome reminder that shedlike atmospheres can be fun as well as work. Based in Sussex, they tour their camera obscura booth around the country attending pop festivals, street arts festivals, community days and anything they are invited to. Since they started up nine years ago, they have also travelled to Japan and Australia. As well as the model shown, they also build camera obscura, either from scratch or converting existing rooms or buildings.

The sideshow booth can go almost anywhere: it is self supporting, requires no services and just uses the reflected light of the sun to create the images. They can put it up or take it down in about an hour. Below is the booth in action at Stokefest and the good burghers of Stoke Newington in 2008. "Getting out and meeting all those people has to be one of the best parts of our job," says Tony Willett.

You can catch the chaps and their booth on March 7 at a Science and Engineering Day from 10.30am to 4pm on the Highfield Campus at the University of Southampton. This is a free event aimed at children aged between 5 and 12 and their parents. And on March 15 they will be going to Dublin as part of the St Patrick's Day celebrations.

Caravan Obscura

The Shedworking staff is a keen fan of obscuras and the Caravan Obscura is no less fascinating. It is the creation of artist Kenny Bean. Obscuras - a way of using mirrors and lenses to project the landscape outside onto the inside ceiling of a small building, in this case, a caravan - were popular in Victorian Britain and after falling out of fashion, they seem to be slightly on the rise again.

The Caravan Obscura runs workshops and appears at festivals around the country. You can catch up with it at various drop-in sessions on March 19 at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (next to the pond near the East Gate) for the absolute bargain price of free. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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How to build a camera obscura

As promised, here are some photo details of how Anna and Leon built their camera obscura, featured on Shedworking yesterday.

Eye Pod

More of a shedrelaxing then strictly shedworking space, the Eye Pod at Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Chaska (now at the city's Science Museum as an outdoor exhibit), is nevertheless a rather lovely build. An entry in the Arboretum's Secret Gardens competition (inspired by the book), it's a walk-in camera obscura designed by the excellent Cermak Rhoades Architects and built with the collaboration of Frerichs Construction Company, Mattson Macdonald Yound Structural Engineers and Scherer Bros. Lumber.A Bill Kratz spot.

A short history of garageworking

Garageworking is the twin sibling of Shedworking - as readers know, many great ideas came from garageworkers such as Walt Disney and companies such as technology giant HP first set up shop in a garage. A nice little article on the always excellent Atlas Obscura Why There’s No Place Quite Like the American Garage, looks at the garage phenomenon and points out for example that garages are "a perfect stage for rebellion", going on to list:

"...the one where Jeff Ho shaped surfboards and skateboards and, by extension, modern skate culture; the one where No Doubt practiced and had their first house show; the one where the Sisters of the Valley, an order of secular nuns, grew weed; the garage of dominatrix Selina Minx; and the home of Franklin Bell’s Blues Workshop, held on Sundays in a one-car garage in Los Angeles."

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Book Towns book

Apologies for this off-topic post (though there are some sheds featured), but I just quickly wanted to let you know that I have a new book out today, Book Towns (you can read an interview I've just done about it and them on Atlas Obscura). Here's the bumph:

Book towns are a reader’s ultimate getaway destination. From Hay-on-Wye in Wales to Urueña in Spain, Fjaerland in Norway to Jimbochu in Japan, around 40 semi-official book towns now exist around the world. But until now, there has been no complete directory of their location, history and charm. Book Towns takes readers on a richly illustrated tour of these captivating, dedicated havens of literature, outlining the origins and development of each community, and offering practical travel advice. Explore bustling book markets in Kolkata and Buenos Aires, and pop-up shops in old churches, ferry waiting rooms and stables. A stylish and original guide, it is the perfect gift for both book lovers and travel enthusiasts.

Published today in the USA, published on April 5 in the UK. ---------------------------------------------------------

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Henry David Thoreau's cabin vs gas pipeline

An excellent article on Atlas Obscura looks at how protestors, led by timber-frame builder Will Elwell are protesting against a planned new gas pipeline through their village of Ashfield, Massachusetts (and some of the state's sensitive ecosystem), by building a cabin modelled on Godfather of Shedworking Henry David Thoreau's Walden cabin right in its proposed path. Here's a snippet:

Though Elwell had grown up close to Concord, and often went fishing at Walden Pond, he’d never really thought much about Thoreau. But he knew that Thoreau had written about civil disobedience, intertwined with philosophy, society, government, and nature. “Thoreau felt that if the government is not taking care of those who it governs, then there’s a right for citizens to express their opinion about that,” says Elwell. “And also if they need to create some kind of civil disobedience to change things, instead of just sitting around and accepting the status quo.” 

More details at the campaign's Facebook page Thoreau Cabin Pipeline Barricade

 

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