Walk into the massive air hangar and the first thing you notice is an oppressive darkness broken only by a tiny beam of light from a gumball-size hole in the wall.

Then, as the eye adjusts, an upside-down image emerges on the opposite wall that is startling in its clarity -- a dilapidated air traffic control tower, an overgrown runway and palm trees clustered amid rolling hills.

Once home to roaring fighter jets, this decommissioned Marine Corps hangar is now the world's largest camera poised to take the world's largest picture. If all goes well, within days the hangar-turned-camera will record a panoramic image of what's on the other side of the door using the centuries-old principle of "camera obscura."

"This project is about being deep inside photography, in the sense that you can walk inside the camera. It's the origins of photography and we've been living in it for weeks at a time," said Doug McCulloh, a photography teacher at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.