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| **Update A preliminary page on our 2006 tour of Great Britain camera obscuras is posted. Expanded pages on this trip are coming soon. |
| Map of Camera Obscuras visited in 1996 |
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On May 23, 1996 we flew from the US to Great Britain on a mission to visit as many working camera obscura rooms as we could in seventeen days. Our preliminary research on the internet, from books, and through contacts we had made on earlier trips identified at least nine or ten that were standing and we hoped still functioning. We sat down with a calendar, a map of Britain, and a rail guide and worked out an itinerary that would make it possible, if everything went like clock work, for us to visit seven or eight camera obscuras and three or four of our favorite museums of photographic history. This schedule was made possible by a BRITRAIL Flexipass that allowed us to travel anywhere British Rail ran on any fifteen days in a month. Unknown to us we picked a time period when all sorts of things could have ruined our travel and lodging schedule. The Friday we arrived was the start of a Bank Holiday, we arrived in Bristol during a festival of ships, on the Isle of Man in the thick of the TT motorcycle races, and in London during the European soccer matches! In our innocence we set off hoping for the best and in the seventeen days we were on the British Isles we traveled on fifteen days, visited seven camera obscuras and three museums. We had amazing luck with the schedule and only missed one train connection, had to pass up one camera obscura we had hoped to visit and cut one museum from our original wish list. Ironically we were in the cities where both were located but not at the correct time to visit.
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