CAMERA OBSCURA (ST)

Long before Instagram filters, before JPEG compression, before anyone uttered the words “say cheese,” there was the camera obscura. Latin for “dark room,” it was less a camera and more a marvel: a pinhole-sized portal where light bent reality and projected it backward. No pixels. Just pure optics.

Johannes Kepler didn’t invent the device, but he did help explain it, refine it, and give it the name we still use today. In 1604 (MDCIV, for those keeping it Roman), he was already thinking in terms of light rays, lens shapes, and upside-down worldviews. A philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer, Kepler was the kind of person who’d have absolutely hated how many people today confuse aperture with shutter speed.

This design honors that blurry boundary between science and sorcery. It’s an ode to the moment photography began: not with film or sensors, but with light, logic, and a little darkness.

This premium Bella+Canvas apparel short-sleeve tee shirt is available in several timeless colors. It wears like your favorite vintage tee and looks like it survived four centuries of thinking.

Because sometimes, to move forward, you start with a bit of obscurity.