I felt like I was inside a pinhole camera. The camera obscura was only one of several projects the students completed over the course of the semester. They also explored creating images in cyanotype, Van Dyke brown and salt. The cyanotype, one of the oldest photographic processes, is so-named because of its Prussian blue color and gave way to the use of Van Dyke brown, a turn of the century process. The introduction of silver nitrate gave the prints their warm, chocolate brown color.
Salt prints are the most modern of the three photographic processes.
As the name suggests, the prints are made by the incorporation of table salt in the process and the prints have more contrast and a shorter range of tones. As they were used in the infancy of photography, they were practiced for only a couple years before the next method came along. Using the oatmeal boxes as pinhole cameras creates a distorted image due to the extreme wide-angle of the pinhole and the curvature of the box of oats. Photographic paper is inserted into the boxes, which are left in the sun for exposure. The use of pinholes in creating art was employed by pictoral artists such as Dutch painter Jan Vermeer.