It’s fun to be a voyeur

Reality television can often be unsatisfying because although there is some measure of unpredictability, there are certainly some things that producers just won’t let happen on air.

Still, people watch because it’s fun to be a voyeur — to observe something from the perspective of a fly on the wall — even if it’s not true reality.

And soon you’ll get to see an unrecorded, uncensored version of America’s new favorite pastime at this year’s Orange County Fair.

As part of this year’s theme, “Say Cheese,” the fair commissioned a camera obscura, a relic of old fashioned photography, to sit atop one of the exhibition buildings on the main mall.

The device, which looks on the outside like a large, rectangular periscope popping up from the roof, projects a full-color, high-resolution video of what’s going on outside the building onto a white table in a dark room.

It’s basically a slight variation on the primitive pinhole cameras that have been used for centuries. George Keane, who designed and built the device for almost a year, said it has a charm that is lacking in modern day video cameras.

“This is real. This is the instantaneous scene outside the building. There’s a difference in the quality of the image when you’re looking at the real world. There’s no interruption, no scanning, no flickers and no commercials,” Keane said.

Building primitive cameras on different scales is a hobby for Keane, who used to design the optics for top secret spy satellites during the Cold War while working for Eastman Kodak.

Now he runs a one-man operation from his home in the woods of Northern California. Among other famous camera obscuri, he also designed the camera at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, from which viewers can see the “Hollywood” sign, miles in the distance, in such vivid detail that they can read the inscriptions on nearby hikers’ T-shirts.

“He’s really the only guy designing relevant and significant things of this type,” said fair coordinator Joan Hamill.

Exhibit Supervisor Rachelle Weir got the idea to commission the project while traveling in Scotland, just more than a year ago.

She thought it would be an interesting, interactive way to demonstrate the history of photography.

“It was put in not just for educational purposes, but also for the voyeur aspect,” Weir said. “People love the idea of spying on people outside.”

“None of these people know we’re watching them,” said fair spokeswoman Robin Wachner, with a sly smile on her face, as she, Hamill and Weir stood around the table and watched.

Then laughter erupted as a silver sport utility vehicle nearly escaped a collision with a worker wearing a white hard hat and a blue jumpsuit. The near miss led to speculation about what other things, from the entertaining to the ghastly, might happen while a room full of viewers looked on.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].