This 2,500-year-old photo technique lets you shoot without a camera lens – here's how to do it

Blurred image of a narrow walkway lined with stone walls and covered in autumn leaves under colorful foliage.

Today is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day – the perfect opportunity to rediscover the origins of photography and experiment with a simple, lens-free photo technique – inspired by the earliest days of image-making.

The camera obscura, also known as a pinhole camera, is one of the oldest photographic concepts in history, dating back over 2,500 years to the 5th century BC. As part of his studies on how we see, the Arab scholar Ibn Al-Haytham is credited with inventing this camera, showing how light can be used to project an image onto a flat surface.