Photography is today the ubiquitous media of human life. It's the area that interconnects science and art: physics, chemistry and visual arts. It focuses on recording and retention of light on the photo-sensitive surface (Žerjav, 2011). The aim of this thesis is to get to know the differences between art photography and other photographic fields, to get acquainted with emergence and historical development of photography through the technical and the visual aspect. In the empirical part of the thesis, the subject matter of the research is a student understanding of the principle of the formation of an image introducing them to the construction and the principles of working with the camera obscura, the application the acquired knowledge to the production of theirown photographs.