Walking into a room full of 6th form students is a pretty daunting prospect. Yet I can honestly say that so far, I have had only positive experiences working with A'Level photography students.
Most of them have only ever used digital cameras so the hands-on approach is a novelty. The very first thing we do is black out the room we are in and turn it into a camera obscura. Within 15 minutes every one of the students is completely in awe of the process and asking all sorts of questions about how and why it works. I take this opportunity to explain the physics of the whole thing, demonstrate the differences a larger or smaller aperture makes and show them how to calculate an F-stop.
From here we turn to making pinhole cameras from the variety of cardboard boxes they have brought in. After working out their individual camera's f-stop, we all load in a piece of photographic paper and head outside to take a photo - using a light meter to work out our length of exposure.
My favourite part of darkroom work is watching the image appear in the developing tray. After 20 years of doing it, I am still thrilled. You can imagine the effect on a student who has just created the camera that has taken the picture and was fully expecting it not to work... All I can add is that we spend a frenzied afternoon loading cameras, developing photos and scanning results. Tiring, but great fun.
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