leonardodavinci

A tourist started a social media debate about the iPhone zoom after he used it to impressively focus on the Mona Lisa painting in a crowded Louvre museum.

There comes a point in any passion or career when you feel like you hit a brick wall; you feel like you’re standing there motionless while everyone else is carrying on achieving things and becoming more successful than you -- whatever your definition of success.

But as you'll understand once you watch this fantastic two-part video series, everybody who has ever achieved anything has gone through this (sometimes many-year-long) phase. We just never hear about this lost chapter in their lives.

In 1505, Leonardo da Vinci painted a vast mural in Florence's town hall titled "The Battle of Anghiari" -- believed to be one of his greatest works. After being on display for more than 40 years, the unfinished painting was lost when the hall underwent renovations and new murals by Giorgio Vasari were added. There are no known records explaining what happened to the piece, but many people believe that it is currently hidden behind one particular mural called "Battle of Marciano in Val di Chiana".

Photographer David Yoder began photographing this mystery for the National Geographic starting in 2007, and soon began looking for a way to photograph the lost painting through the existing mural. He's currently attempting to raise $266,500 through Kickstarter to develop a camera to do this.

If you're ever in beautiful San Francisco, you might want to pay a visit to the giant camera obscura, a room sized "camera" built in 1946 and based on a 15th century design by Leonardo da Vinci. It's designed to look like someone left a giant 35mm there with its lens pointed to the sky.